The Sins of Wages: Wage Theft in the United States

Wage theft, or the withholding of wages from workers who are rightfully owed remuneration, has gone relatively unexamined by criminologists, even those who study white-collar and corporate crime. This study draws on available data on corporate crime—and wage theft specifically—to estimate the likelihood of publicly traded U.S. firms engaging in wage theft. I test several hypotheses drawn from theoretical perspectives on corporate crime using a sample of publicly traded U.S. firms—848 sanctioned for wage theft and a comparison group of 1,334 non-wage theft firms—to determine firm characteristics that are predictive of firms’ engagement in wage theft. Results reveal that larger firms and those operating in industries previously identified as problematic for worker exploitation are more likely to have been sanctioned for wage theft. I discuss the implications and limitations of the study, as well as offer suggestions for further criminological inquiry into the problem.