Recovery of Back Wages Decreased in FY 2024, DOL Reports

November 20, 2024

What's New

The Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division collected $149.9 million in total back wages for FLSA-based cases for 125,301 employees in FY 2024, according to limited enforcement data from DOL. Of this total, 85% was for overtime violations, 10% was for minimum wage violations, 4.9% for tip-related violations, and the remainder for retaliation.

For a second consecutive year, WHD limited its FLSA statistical release to back wages data. The agency disclosed only the amount of monetary benefits collected by the agency and the numbers of employees receiving these monetary benefits—broken down into minimum wage, overtime, retaliation, and tip-related categories. WHD failed to disclose both the number of closed overtime cases and the number of closed minimum wage cases as it did for the years before FY 2023.

CWC has prepared a chart of FLSA enforcement activity undertaken by WHD over the past ten years.

What It Means

In FY 2024, the Wage and Hour Division recovered the lowest annual amount in total back wages over the last decade. Both the amount of back wages collected (down 4%) and the number of employees receiving back wages (down 7%) in FY 2024 decreased from FY 2023.

What You Should Do

CWC members can continue to follow us for ongoing news from the Wage and Hour Division.

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Recovery of Back Wages Decreased in FY 2024, DOL Reports

Nov 20, 2024 – Limited enforcement data reported by the Labor Department under the Fair Labor Standards Act show that DOL recovery of back wages for violations has dropped to its lowest level in a decade.

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