What is "wage theft"

n. The illegal withholding of wages or denial of benefits that are rightfully owed to an employee.

Wage theft is the denial of wages or employee benefits that are rightfully owed to an employee. Wage theft can be conducted through various means such as: failure to pay overtime, minimum wage violations, employee misclassification, illegal deductions in pay, working off the clock, or not being paid at all.

According to some studies, wage theft is common in the United States, particularly from low wage legal or illegal immigrant workers. The Economic Policy Institute reported in 2014 that survey evidence suggests wage theft costs US workers billions of dollars a year. Some rights violated by wage theft have been guaranteed to workers in the United States in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).