Making an impact for misclassified workers

As 2024 comes to a close, it’s a good time to reflect on how the U.S. Department of Labor delivers results for workers across the country. We’re particularly proud of enforcing minimum wage and overtime protections for employees who were misclassified as independent contractors. Since January 2021, we’ve recovered over $41 million in back wages for more than 28,000 workers who were misclassified as independent contractors.

This administration has always recognized that people across our nation who are in business for themselves play a critical role in our economy. However, putting a stop to misclassification of employees as independent contractors has been a priority for the Wage and Hour Division for the past four years. When employees are misclassified, they lose the protections of wage and hour laws, health and safety laws, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, tax protections and more.

Throughout the country and across various industries, the Wage and Hour Division has been focused on ensuring employees receive the minimum wage and overtime protections they’re entitled to under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Here are just a few examples of our work: 

• In 2021, our investigation of two Minnesota restaurants found that cooks and dishwashers were misclassified as independent contractors, and 36 workers received more than $435,000 in minimum wage and overtime back wages.
• In 2022, we found that 478 construction workers in Massachusetts were misclassified, and we recovered $1.8 million for them because they did not receive overtime pay for their long hours doing residential and commercial construction work in New England.
• In 2023, our investigation in California recovered $650,000 in unpaid overtime wages for 26 delivery drivers who were misclassified as independent contractors by a food manufacturer.
• And in 2024, after our investigation found 341 healthcare workers in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont were misclassified as independent contractors, their employers were ordered to pay them more than $2.4 million in overtime back wages and damages.

In each of these cases – and so many others over the past four years – we’ve been driven by a vision to build an economy that works for everyone. We know that misclassification not only harms workers and their families, but also gives employers who misclassify workers an unfair advantage over employers who comply with the law.

In addition to enforcing minimum wage and overtime protections and providing compliance assistance to employers, we implemented a final rule in 2024 to revise our guidance on how to analyze whether a worker is an employee or independent contractor under the FLSA. This final rule realigns our guidance with longstanding judicial precedent, giving employers and workers greater clarity, improving compliance and better protecting working people. In addition, the rule helps to ensure that independent contractors, including freelancers, who are in business for themselves are classified correctly.

Ensuring employees under the FLSA receive the hard-earned wages and protections they’re legally entitled to is the role of the department’s Wage and Hour Division. With that in mind, we urge workers who believe they might be misclassified to call our toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243). We also offer free compliance assistance to employers who have questions about employee or independent contractor classification. Calls are confidential and we can speak with callers in more than 200 languages.

Jessica Looman is the administrator for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division. Follow the division on X, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.