Insights · Wage and hour
Groundwork research · Published October 6, 2026 · Updated October 20, 2026 · Data as of July 14, 2026 · 5 min read
The Labor Department's records hold 267,635 wage-and-hour cases with a violation under the laws we track. 55,812 of them are at restaurants and 10,868 at hotels: 25% of all of them. Restaurants are the largest industry in the records, by cases and by back wages assessed. Below: the chains with the most cases, who a case names, and where child labor findings show up.
21% of all cases
4% of all cases
15% of all back wages assessed
2% of all back wages assessed
Cases with a violation under the laws we track, from the Wage and Hour Division enforcement database. Back wages are what DOL assessed as owed to workers in those cases.
Restaurants and food service are first among industries by cases and first by back wages assessed. Hotels and other lodging are seventh by cases (4.1%) and thirteenth by back wages: a hotel case averages $6,158 in back wages and a restaurant case $11,094.
Share of all cases with a violation, by industry
Subway has the most, with 1,305, then McDonald's with 557. Each count adds together the spellings of a brand that we group by hand: "Dunkin", "Dunkin' Donuts" and "Dunkin' Donuts Baskin-Robbins" are one name. A chain with more locations has more cases, so the counts follow size: they show where the records are.
Cases with a violation, restaurant chains
Holiday Inn Express leads the hotels with 347. The next four (Days Inn, Super 8, Quality Inn and Comfort Inn) have between 314 and 332.
Cases with a violation, hotel chains
A case names the business DOL investigated, which is the company that ran the location. For a franchised brand that is usually the franchise owner, and the brand appears as the trade name. Subway's 1,305 cases name 1,023 different operating companies; McDonald's 557 name 434.
DOL's own announcements read the same way. In February 2026 the department announced a settlement with the operator of a Little Caesars restaurant in Redwood City, California: $409,457 in back wages for 32 workers. In April it announced $95,095 recovered for 33 cooks at three IHOP franchise locations in North and South Carolina.
A child labor finding means DOL found that the operator broke the Fair Labor Standards Act's rules on the hours or the kind of work for people under 18. 16% of restaurant cases include one, against 4% of hotel cases. By brand the share varies widely: among the 18 restaurant brands with 100 or more cases it runs from 6% at Denny's to 56% at Little Caesars.
Share of a brand's cases with a violation that include a child labor finding
The records show the share of cases; why a case happened is outside the data. A brand that employs more teenagers, or one that DOL examined more closely, shows more child labor findings for those reasons too.
The numbers describe Wage and Hour Division cases with a violation at locations that trade under a brand name: where they are, what they found and which companies they name. Investigations that found no violation, open investigations, private lawsuits and state cases sit outside the data, so a brand with no case here has no federal case with a violation on file under the laws we track. Use the counts to see where the records are, and open a brand's own page for its cases by year.
Cases in the Wage and Hour Division enforcement database, loaded July 14, 2026, that carry a violation under one of the eight laws we track (H-1B, minimum wage and overtime,
child labor, sub-minimum wage, H-2A, H-2B, Davis-Bacon and migrant and seasonal farmworker protections). The database holds every compliance action DOL concluded since fiscal 2005, including those that found no violation; our copy
keeps the cases with one. A case counts once however many laws it breaks. Industry is the NAICS code DOL records,
grouped by its first three digits. A brand's cases are those filed under any approved spelling of its name, as a trade name or a legal name (the grouping is a hand-approved list, shown on each brand's page).
A brand is a restaurant chain, or a hotel chain, when 60% or more of its cases are in that industry, among the 150 brands with the most cases.
Operating companies are the different legal names the cases carry, after case, punctuation and company suffixes are removed. Back wages are what DOL assessed; what workers received can differ.
Built by scripts/build_insights.py.
Corrected October 20, 2026. The first version of this article called these cases "concluded cases" and gave restaurants and hotels 25% of all of them. The cases are the ones with a violation under the laws we track, and the 25% is the share of those cases.
Sources: DOL Open Data Portal, Wage and Hour Division enforcement data; DOL release, Little Caesars operator (February 2026); DOL release, IHOP franchise locations (April 2026).
Informational only; not legal, immigration, or financial advice.
Open any chain's own page for its cases by year, or check an employer in a full report with your job and your pay.
See employer records →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 DOL wage and hour enforcement data: 267,635 cases
The fields of a Wage and Hour case, the laws behind the numbers, what back wages agreed to pay and penalties assessed mean, and the cases a copy of the dataset leaves out.
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.
What happens after a layoff: the BLS survey of 3.3 million workers
Who lost a job held for three years or more, why it ended, how many had written notice, who was working again in January 2026 by industry and kind of work, and what the next job paid.
Amazon: 9,746 workers in 30 layoff notices
What state layoff notices and Labor Department H-1B filings show for Amazon: the notices over the past year, the sites, and the sponsorship record.
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.
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.