Abstract
Using Current Population Survey (CPS) Merged Outgoing Rotation Group data from the U.S. Census Bureau—considered to be among the best publicly available data on hours and earnings—the following memo breaks down minimum wage theft trends in Washington by industry, occupation, job, and worker characteristics. Industry violation estimates are further compared to complaint data from the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) to begin to understand how employer violation rates and worker complaint rates compare across sectors.
Among our key findings:
- Nearly 40% of Washingtonians employed by private households—including caretakers, cooks, maids, and maintenance workers—have experienced a minimum wage violation.
- Nearly 20% of workers employed in food services, one of the largest and fastest-growing industries in the U.S., experienced a minimum wage violation.
- Violation rates were also particularly high in the arts, entertainment and recreation industry, including gambling services workers and other entertainment and recreational attendants.
- Workers in a) private households and b) social assistance (e.g., childcare workers, personal care aides) experience very high rates of wage theft but rarely complain to the state agency about their labor law violations, suggesting that the agency’s resources may be inefficiently allocated. This is particularly pressing given that home health and personal care aides are one of the fastest growing occupations in the U.S.
- Workers of intersecting marginalized identities are more likely to experience wage theft; Black, Asian/Pacific Islander (PI) and Latina noncitizens are more than twice as likely to experience a minimum wage violation as a white male citizen.
- Younger and older Washington workers are particularly likely to experience minimum wage theft.
- Non-hourly workers, part-time workers, service sector workers, and those that didn’t graduate from high school each suffer disproportionately high rates of theft.
- Workers that allege unpaid minimum wages often allege multiple other types of violations, including unpaid hours worked, unpaid final wages, unpaid overtime, and employer retaliation.