A new report reveals that wage theft is rampant among California’s domestic workers, as 20% of them get paid less than minimum wage.
The report was compiled by Workplace Justice Lab, a multi-institutional research partnership concerned with workers’ rights and income inequality.
According to the report, over 2 million Californian households employ 330,000 domestic workers to clean their homes or care for children, elders, people with disabilities, or those with health conditions.
After analyzing federal data between 2014 and 2023, researchers found that 67,000 of these workers receive less than minimum wage, losing an average of $4,200 every year.
Spread over ten years, the total stolen wages account for a total of $2.8 billion.
Most of the workers are women and people of color, with around half of them identifying as Latina. Around 74% are American citizens, and 45% have attended college, the report said.
Those working as house cleaners and childcare providers are more likely to experience wage theft, as are non-citizens and those who do not have a high school diploma.
The report notes that while the median wage for domestic workers increased from $8 in 2014 to $15 in 2023, it remains significantly less than the $25 median wage for all other workers in the state.
“Domestic work is the backbone of California’s care economy,” said Daniel Galvin, one of the report’s authors, in a news release issued Tuesday. “Yet because it happens behind closed doors, it remains uniquely vulnerable to exploitation,” he added.
“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.”