Policy Matter Ohio
May 18, 2022
KEY FINDINGS: WAGE THEFT IN OHIO
- Ohio employers steal from an estimated 213,000 workers a year by paying them less than the state or federal minimum wage.
- If wage theft victims stayed on their job the full year, the total underpayment of wages to these Ohio workers would be $611 million each year.
- While 3.8% of all Ohio workers have wages stolen each year, employers steal from 18.4% of workers paid $11.44 per hour or less.
- Victims of minimum wage violations are underpaid an average of $55 per week, 24% of the weekly earnings owed to them. If they work year-round, they lose, on average, $2,873 per year and are paid only $9,011 in annual wages.
- Women make up about three in five victims who are paid below the minimum wage.
- Hispanic workers were 74% more likely to become victims than white counterparts, while Ohioans of other races — about three quarters of whom are Asian — were 51% more likely. Black workers were about as likely to indicate wages below the minimum wage as white workers, but Black workers spent more hours working for employers who stole from them and lost more wages, overall.
- About 54,000 parents are paid below the minimum wage each year. Together they are raising about 108,000 children under 18 years old.
- Low-paid workers in all industries are vulnerable, but half the wage theft cases occurred in the leisure and hospitality industry.
Introduction
Everyone who works should be paid their full wages for all the hours they put in. Too often in Ohio, employers steal from workers’ paychecks. By underfunding wage and hour enforcement, Ohio lawmakers make it too easy for employers to commit wage theft, and too hard for workers to be made whole. The scale of wage theft is difficult to measure, but we know that it far exceeds the number of cases ever reported. Most wage theft victims never come forward because they don’t know their rights, think nothing will be done for them, or fear retaliation from their employer.
Using Current Population Survey (CPS) data and a method developed by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), this report quantifies the scope and cost of wage theft to Ohio’s working people. Employers steal from an estimated 213,000 Ohioans each year through minimum wage violations alone.[1] This report updates prior research released by EPI and reveals that, in the five years since that research was released, the scale of wage theft in Ohio has remained virtually unchanged.[2] Employers in all sectors steal from employees, but wage theft is most prevalent in industries that pay low wages, especially leisure and hospitality. Wage theft compounds financial hardships for people who are too often exploited at work due to their race, gender, immigration status or socioeconomic class.
This report quantifies the scope and cost of wage theft to Ohioans through minimum wage nonpayment alone. Because the vast majority of wage theft goes unreported, most types of wage theft cannot be measured. This report identifies minimum wage nonpayment — just one form of wage theft — from respondents to the Current Population Survey who identified their wage as less than the federal or Ohio minimum wage, regardless of whether they ever made a wage claim. These estimates have been produced by Policy Matters Ohio following a research methodology developed by EPI. Data are from the CPS Outgoing Rotation Group for years 2017-2019, using the extract from the Center for Economic Policy Research.[3] Exempt workers are identified wherever possible so that those estimated here to be wage theft victims were both paid less than the minimum wage and covered employees under state or federal law. Wages are reported in current year dollars. A full methodology is available from Policy Matters Ohio.