Wage Theft,
By the Numbers

Shade is the total back wages investigators found owed to workers in each state across every concluded case. The four darkest ledgers - Texas, California, New York and Florida - together hold 37% of the national total. Read it as a raw dollar count that tracks workforce size, not a violation rate per worker.

Hover a state for its figures

All 51 jurisdictions, ranked (data table)

State	Back wages	Cases	Workers	Owed / worker	Share
Texas	$567M	47,269	606,912	$934
California	$450M	30,157	325,353	$1,383
New York	$365M	23,048	286,181	$1,276
Florida	$299M	29,548	355,366	$842
Virginia	$205M	8,624	130,753	$1,565
Pennsylvania	$192M	15,702	197,949	$968
New Jersey	$160M	10,133	118,212	$1,354
Illinois	$141M	11,500	154,920	$910
Maryland	$132M	3,963	61,079	$2,160
North Carolina	$123M	12,799	129,254	$950
Georgia	$122M	10,702	140,338	$871
Arizona	$114M	5,807	122,468	$929
Ohio	$113M	9,891	168,760	$669
Tennessee	$96M	6,784	91,522	$1,047
Massachusetts	$95M	5,125	73,921	$1,283
Michigan	$92M	9,846	128,151	$717
Arkansas	$78M	5,549	162,324	$480
Louisiana	$78M	5,807	97,626	$795
Washington	$75M	4,353	62,542	$1,197
Missouri	$66M	8,045	102,396	$641
Colorado	$60M	6,374	81,609	$739
South Carolina	$56M	5,329	60,535	$926
Alabama	$55M	6,413	69,368	$797
Utah	$53M	4,451	97,895	$543
Oklahoma	$52M	5,501	74,670	$694
Nevada	$49M	3,019	48,629	$1,000
Indiana	$47M	5,382	61,778	$755
Kansas	$46M	4,613	54,292	$845
Mississippi	$45M	4,524	58,295	$768
Wisconsin	$43M	3,360	50,259	$850
Minnesota	$42M	2,825	60,648	$697
Kentucky	$41M	4,079	46,935	$880
New Mexico	$41M	3,926	41,203	$992
Connecticut	$41M	3,492	34,827	$1,169
Hawaii	$33M	2,096	23,478	$1,386
Iowa	$31M	4,631	38,477	$813
Oregon	$31M	2,414	25,202	$1,235
West Virginia	$25M	3,678	26,119	$974
District of Columbia	$24M	555	10,985	$2,184
Nebraska	$22M	3,941	29,404	$751
New Hampshire	$21M	2,328	19,812	$1,039
Rhode Island	$19M	1,853	17,273	$1,081
Idaho	$18M	1,972	22,738	$796
Vermont	$13M	1,036	10,236	$1,303
Alaska	$10M	720	6,289	$1,631
Maine	$9M	1,584	13,633	$627
South Dakota	$8M	1,594	16,693	$458
Delaware	$7M	684	7,135	$1,028
North Dakota	$6M	673	6,134	$1,029
Wyoming	$6M	850	6,921	$834
Montana	$6M	742	7,706	$719

Wage theft clusters where the work is low-wage, fast-turnover and hard to police. Restaurants and construction lead every other sector - together 36% of all back wages owed. The average check per worker, filed alongside, tells the second story: some sectors owe a little to a great many, others a lot to a few.

Every sector, with the per-worker reading (data table)

Sector	Back wages	Cases	Workers	Owed / worker
Construction	$723M	44,700	496,963	$1,456
Food services & drinking places	$693M	80,732	833,673	$832
Health care & social assistance	$605M	47,352	735,874	$822
Administrative & staffing services	$571M	27,813	627,900	$909
Retail trade	$286M	38,361	400,556	$714
Manufacturing	$279M	22,356	310,437	$900
Professional & business services	$278M	10,315	132,248	$2,104
Transportation & warehousing	$242M	14,806	199,210	$1,217
Other services (repair, laundry, personal care)	$123M	12,664	132,395	$926
Agriculture & farm labor	$99M	24,913	176,980	$562
Wholesale trade	$79M	5,852	81,051	$973

Total dollars and per-worker harm are not the same story. Restaurants underpay the most people - more than 830,000 workers - but only about $830 each. In professional-services work the crowd is far smaller, yet the average check climbs past $2,000 a worker. Bubble size is total back wages; the two readings pull apart along the diagonal.

All sectors by owed-per-worker (data table)

Sector	Owed / worker	Workers	Back wages
Professional & business services	$2,104	132,248	$278M
Construction	$1,456	496,963	$723M
Transportation & warehousing	$1,217	199,210	$242M
Wholesale trade	$973	81,051	$79M
Other services (repair, laundry, personal care)	$926	132,395	$123M
Administrative & staffing services	$909	627,900	$571M
Manufacturing	$900	310,437	$279M
Food services & drinking places	$832	833,673	$693M
Health care & social assistance	$822	735,874	$605M
Retail trade	$714	400,556	$286M
Agriculture & farm labor	$562	176,980	$99M

Each column is the back wages investigators found owed that fiscal year. Recovery ran highest early in the 2010s - the high-water mark is $305M in 2011 - then held a plateau until the pandemic stalled on-site investigations in FY2020. It has not returned to that plateau since: enforcement dollars have drifted down through the 2020s, leaving the most recent years the thinnest in two decades.

Every fiscal year (data table)

Fiscal year	Back wages	Cases closed	Workers
FY2005	$175M	21,212	216,666
FY2006	$197M	19,247	244,177
FY2007	$244M	18,234	352,255
FY2008	$198M	17,608	234,529
FY2009	$218M	16,812	215,822
FY2010	$242M	19,253	273,948
FY2011	$305M	22,819	288,079
FY2012	$255M	25,252	295,939
FY2013	$263M	22,691	284,753
FY2014	$246M	20,799	255,133
FY2015	$237M	18,413	229,113
FY2016	$207M	14,671	194,557
FY2017	$248M	18,641	236,483
FY2018	$258M	17,476	231,626
FY2019	$255M	16,555	195,032
FY2020	$193M	14,148	167,066
FY2021	$197M	12,579	152,516
FY2022	$206M	11,051	152,414
FY2023	$168M	10,086	150,972
FY2024	$125M	7,695	86,975
FY2025	$59M	4,625	36,041

Wage theft is rarely exotic. Unpaid overtime and sub-minimum wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act account for 78% of every dollar owed. Government-contract laws - the Service Contract Act and Davis-Bacon - and the H-2 guest-worker programs make up most of the rest.

Recovery is lopsided. 44% of concluded cases end with no back wages at all, and most of the rest are small. Yet the largest 2.2% of cases - the two heaviest brackets - carry 53% of every dollar owed.

Line up every closed case from smallest to largest and track the money as it accumulates. If harm were spread evenly the line would run straight up the diagonal. Instead it sags hard: the heaviest 2.2% of cases carry roughly half of all dollars owed, a concentration index of 0.88.