Each year, employers take an estimated fifty billion dollars from workers: unpaid overtime, hours clocked off the books, wages held below the legal minimum, employees relabeled as contractors. It is more than every robbery, burglary, and car theft in the country put together. Yet almost none of it is ever counted as crime.
The large drifting field is that fifty billion. The small, bright cluster is all street theft combined. Move across the dark to surface the real figures.
Taken from workers / year$50 billion
All street theft combined$14 billion
Workers affected (DOL)2.4 million
Average loss per worker$3,300
Recovered by DOL (2022)$1.3 billion
Share prosecuted criminally0.01%
Figures: Economic Policy Institute (annual wage theft estimate), U.S. Department of Labor (workers affected, recovery), FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (property crime). datapoems.io ·
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