Report finds 20% of California’s domestic workers experience wage theft

More than 2 million California households rely on domestic workers to care for their loved ones and keep their living space clean and safe, but new research reveals that many of these vital workers are systematically deprived of basic wage protections.

A report by the Workplace Justice Lab, a multi-institutional partnership including Northwestern University and Rutgers University that focuses on strengthening labor standards enforcement in the U.S., reveals that 20% of California’s domestic workers are illegally paid below the minimum wage, costing each affected worker an average of $4,200 per year in lost earnings.

• Read more: Full report | Executive Summary | Resumen Ejecutivo en Español

“Domestic work is the backbone of California’s care economy, yet because it happens behind closed doors, it remains uniquely vulnerable to exploitation,” said Daniel J. Galvin, director of the Workplace Justice Lab @ Northwestern University and co-author of the report. “The sheer scale of the wage theft documented in our report — $2.8 billion over a decade — proves that these are not isolated incidents, but rather a systemic failure to protect a workforce that millions of families rely on every day.”

“It’s already hard to survive on the minimum wage, let alone raise a family,” said Jake Barnes, research program manager of the Workplace Justice Lab @ Rutgers University and the report’s lead author. “But when you lose hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year to minimum wage theft, it becomes virtually impossible to support yourself and your loved ones.”

Analyzing federal data for the years 2014 to 2023, Workplace Justice Lab researchers found:

• On average, 67,000 of the state’s 330,000 domestic workers were underpaid annually.
• Of them, the average worker lost 22% of their earnings, or just under $4,200 per year. 
• Domestic workers lost a combined $282 million annually and $2.8 billion over 10 years.
• House cleaners and in-home childcare workers faced the highest rates of wage theft.
• Non-citizens, workers without a high school diploma, and those who are paid weekly or piece-rate, as opposed to hourly, were more likely to experience wage theft.

Working in private households, far from the watchful eyes of labor investigators, California’s domestic workers clean homes, prepare meals and care for children, the elderly and people with disabilities. The workforce is overwhelmingly women and people of color, with about half identifying as Latina. The majority work for agencies, while some are employed by families. 

Strikingly, the report finds that 74% of California’s domestic workers are U.S. citizens by birth or naturalization, 80% speak English well, and 45% have gone to college. They have successfully organized to raise their median hourly wage from $8 to $15 in recent years, but it is still far below the $25 median wage for other Californians, and wage theft is pervasive.

Notes

Daniel J. Galvin is the director of the Workplace Justice Lab @ NU, a professor of political science and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern. Jenn Round is the director of the Beyond the Bill program for the Workplace Justice Lab @ NU and formerly led enforcement at the Seattle Office of Labor Standards.

The Workplace Justice Lab is a multi-institutional partnership that conducts research on workers’ rights and economic inequality and collaborates with state and local government agencies as well as worker centers, unions and legal nonprofits. The lab is anchored by Northwestern and Rutgers Universities and the Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California.