Insights · Data guide
Groundwork research · Published October 19, 2026 · Updated October 20, 2026 · Data as of July 14, 2026 · 8 min read
The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the Department of Labor publishes a record of every compliance action it has concluded since fiscal 2005, including the actions that found no violation. Our copy keeps the cases that found a violation under eight laws: 291,400 findings in 267,635 cases, with $4.1 billion in back wages that employers agreed to pay. This guide explains what a record is, what its fields hold, which dates and names to trust and what a copy like ours leaves out.
WHD publishes the records on the Department of Labor's Open Data Portal, where the dataset is called Enforcement (number 10362). The portal describes it as all concluded WHD compliance actions since fiscal 2005, including whether any violations were found, the back wage amount, the number of employees due back wages and the civil money penalties assessed. It holds 110 fields, DOL updates it every quarter and the catalog on Data.gov lists it as public domain. The older Enforcement Database address, enforcedata.dol.gov, now leads to the portal.
DOL also publishes counts of concluded compliance actions by fiscal year in its enforcement statistics. Those counts and the dataset describe the same work, and the section on what a copy leaves out sets them side by side.
One row of the dataset is one case, identified by CASE_ID, with a block of columns for each law WHD enforces. A case under one or two laws leaves most blocks at zero. Our copy turns each case into one row for every law under which it found a violation, so 291,400 rows describe 267,635 cases, and 23,013 cases appear under more than one law, such as a wage finding and a child labor finding together. These are the fields most readers need, in the portal's wording.
The dataset has fields for many laws, among them the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the Davis-Bacon Act, the Service Contract Act, the Family and Medical Leave Act, the H-1A, H-1B, H-2A and H-2B visa programs and OSHA standards. Our copy keeps eight, those that bear on pay and visas. The findings in it by law:
Findings in our copy by law, one for each case and law
The fields differ from law to law. Child labor findings carry the minors found employed in violation and a penalty, and have no back wage field. The Davis-Bacon, H-2B and special minimum wage findings carry back wages and employees, and have no penalty field. The FLSA, H-2A, H-1B and migrant and seasonal farmworker findings carry all of these. 175,687 of the 236,638 FLSA findings in our copy agree to back wages and 12,926 carry a penalty.
Across all the rows in our copy the back wages agreed to pay come to $4,068,899,825 and the penalties assessed to $360,745,933.
The dataset gives two dates for a case, the day WHD determined the findings began and the day it determined they ended. The portal notes that these differ from the case open and case close dates, and that neither of those two is in the dataset. No field says when a case concluded. The findings cover a window of 728 days at the median, and 67% of the 291,390 windows run about two years, the reach-back the Fair Labor Standards Act gives a claim, three years for a willful violation (29 U.S.C. 255).
Some dates cannot be right: 193 rows end their findings before 2000, 1 ends after the year the data was loaded, 9 carry no date at one end and 1 starts after it ends. A year taken from findings_end_date is the year the investigated period ended, a different thing from the year WHD closed the case.
Each case names the employer twice, as an employer name (trade_nm) and as a legal name (legal_name). The two match on 19% of the rows that give both, and the legal name is blank on 1,613 rows (0.6%). The dataset has no tax ID or employer number, so the same company can appear under several spellings and each location is its own case. Our copy holds 221,117 distinct legal names: 195,523 appear in one case, 23,627 in two to four and 1,967 in five or more.
Industry codes (naic_cd) carry up to six digits. 80% of the 291,329 coded rows carry all six, so a join on the full six digits matches those rows and misses the rest.
The dataset holds every concluded action, and our copy holds the cases with a violation under eight laws. The cases without a violation, and the findings under the other laws, are in the dataset and absent from our copy. DOL's statistics show how much that is. Cases in our copy by the year their findings ended, as a share of the compliance actions DOL says it concluded in the fiscal year:
Cases in our copy as a share of the actions DOL says it concluded
In 2023 the findings of 7,581 cases in our copy ended, against 20,215 compliance actions concluded in fiscal 2023. The share runs from 25% in 2025 to 53% in 2017. The two series count different things, cases dated by the end of their findings and actions dated by their conclusion, so a year in one is a different year in the other.
Each employer's own list of findings is on its employer page on this site.
A record with a violation count above zero says WHD found that many violations in one concluded case, for one period at one employer. The finding is WHD's own, from its investigation.
The figure is the amount the employer agreed to pay. The dataset has no field for payment.
DOL counts compliance actions by the fiscal year they concluded. The dataset dates a case by when its findings occurred, and our copy keeps the cases with violations under eight laws.
Search by the legal name and by the employer name, and read the address. A chain appears once for each location investigated.
Wage and Hour enforcement data: the Department of Labor's Open Data Portal dataset 10362 as loaded into our wage warehouse, with rows loaded through July 14, 2026. A case is one case number, counted
once however many laws it was found under, and a finding is a case and a law. A year is the year of findings_end_date. DOL's field descriptions and its counts of concluded compliance actions were read on
October 20, 2026. Built by scripts/build_insights.py.
Sources: DOL Open Data Portal, Enforcement dataset; Data.gov catalog entry; WHD enforcement statistics, all acts.
Informational only; not legal, immigration, or financial advice.
Look up any employer's wage-and-hour findings, layoff notices and H-1B filings, with your own target salary range.
Employers with wage-and-hour findings → · Where our other numbers come from → · Check a job or an employer →Get new articles and the biggest layoff notices
One email a week, sent only when there is something new.
Every message has an unsubscribe link. How we use your address
How to read BEA regional price parities: 387 metro areas
What a regional price parity of 95 or 110 means, how BEA builds one, how 387 metro areas spread around 100, why rent drives it and how the site uses it for pay after cost of living.
How to read OEWS wage data: 824 occupations in 393 metros
The columns and symbols of the OEWS workbooks, what a wage and a percentile mean, how precise the numbers are, and how the H-1B wage levels are built from them.
How to read the H-1B LCA disclosure data: what 661,885 filings hold
The fields of an LCA, the case statuses, wage units and wage levels, and what the quarterly files leave out, with what 661,885 certified filings show.
How to read a WARN notice: what 4,099 state filings contain
What the notices can say, why some are missing, the federal rules and the state lists, the fields of a WARN notice and how we count them, with what a year of notices shows.
Kroger: 19 layoff notices naming 3,066 workers
The state layoff notices filed by Kroger, its warehouse company and its grocery chains: 19 notices and at least 3,066 workers in a year, with the wage and H-1B records alongside.
5.8% of DOL wage cases had child labor violations in fiscal 2025
Child labor violations went from 2.2% of DOL's concluded cases in fiscal 2016 to 5.8% in 2025, with penalties up from $1.9 million to $37.2 million. Where they are found, and what a case looks like.
Wage data: U.S. Department of Labor OFLC LCA Disclosure Data and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS. LCA filings reflect sponsored-worker wage offers, which skew toward mid-large employers and specific occupations — treat any estimate built from a small sample cautiously. Informational only; not legal, immigration, or financial advice.