Nevada workers lose $122M annually to wage theft, newly released study reveals

Bliss Requa-Trautz, director of Arriba Las Vegas Workers Center speaks during a gathering outside of Metro Police headquarters in Las Vegas on Thursday, Feb. 7, 2019. Photo by Miranda Alam/Special to the Sun

Editor's note: Este artículo está traducido al español.

Nevada employers shortchange minimum wage workers an average $122 million each year, according to a new study from Rutgers University and Northwestern University’s Workplace Justice Lab.

The underpayment, also known as wage theft, is most prevalent among domestic workers such as housekeepers, child care workers and personal care aides, the study found.

“The workers that are experiencing these types of wage theft are often already in the shadows,” said Jake Barnes, lead author of the report. “Just the fact that we’re only looking at minimum wage violations here, really what we’re looking at is the tip of the iceberg.”

Bliss Requa-Trautz, executive director of Arriba Las Vegas Workers Center, has seen the problem firsthand.

Over the past two years, her organization has worked with more than 1,200 workers dealing with underpayment, “and we can’t even ourselves meet the needs of folks who are looking for assistance,” she said.

Anecdotally, Requa-Trautz said she knew the issue was widespread in Nevada, but there wasn’t much data to back it up. So the organization reached out to the Workplace Justice Lab, which has conducted similar studies in other states, about researching Nevada.

The effect of wage theft varied among different demographics.

While 10% of Nevada’s labor force is undocumented, noncitizen workers were 1.5 times more likely to suffer from wage theft, according to the study.

Black women noncitizens were about three times more likely to be shortchanged than white male citizens, the report found.

“The harm we experience is not only the wage theft, but psychological manipulation when an employer purposely underpays you and then tells you that you need to be grateful for getting paid at all,” Arriba board member Elizeth Peláez said in a statement.

About 40,000 people a year in Nevada are paid below the minimum wage, according to the study. The average victim loses about $3,000 annually, the study said.

Nevada’s Office of the Labor Commissioner, which investigates claims of wage theft, settled about 5,500 cases during the 2024 financial year. The office collected about $4.29 million in wages, penalties and fines, compared with the $122 million average in lost wages identified by researchers, according to the study.

“The problem is so much bigger than our state has responded to yet,” shesaid.

Requa-Trautz did not put the blame solely on the Office of the Labor Commissioner. Its investigators juggle an average of 113 cases a month, according to the office’s budget request.

The report found that, unless there are changes in enforcement and intervention, workers will continue to lose millions every year.

“Effective enforcement really requires adequate staffing and resources,” Barnes said. “When these caseloads are so high, it becomes really difficult not only to keep up with them but to really strategize and take a step back.”

Issues with enforcement have made Nevada a “beacon” for abusive employers, Requa-Trautz said. She said she had seen bad actors move to Nevada because they could get away with misdeeds they could not in other states.

“Until we are able to get (a better) level of enforcement, every employer is going to think, ‘OK, so I’ll just pocket an extra $60 a week off all of my workers, and that’s an extra vacation home,’ ” Requa-Trautz said. “$60 a week might seem small, but it has added up to billions that have been stolen.”