I'm Paris Jackson in the Cascade PBS newsroom.

Welcome to The Newsfeed.

Think about this.

You work a full shift, but your boss only pays you for part of it.

Or you're putting in overtime hours without seeing a higher pay rate That is wage theft.

And that's what we're diving into this week.

Experts say it's a huge problem spread over a large number of people, but a hard number to estimate because the more vulnerable the worker, the less likely they are to come forward.

Two studies surveying workers in the largest U.S.

cities found that between 17 to 25% of low wage workers had been cheated out of pay.

That's up to 1 in 4 workers.

Washington's Department of Labor and Industries is tasked with investigating wage theft complaints submitted to the state.

For many workers, filing a complaint with L&I is their only option.

The amounts involved are typically too small to hire a lawyer.

In 2025, L&I found workers that filed complaints were underpaid by $6.7 million.

Of that, about 60% has been collected and paid out to workers.

-Wage theft is one of those problems that not a lot of people have great visibility to, but really, collectively, the amount of money that's stolen from employees dwarfs the amount of money that's taken from thefts and burglaries and robberies.

It's exponentially higher.

-Last year, the AG announced the formation of a workers rights unit to address wage theft.

-We're hoping that this new unit will be able to address issues affirmatively based on our own research, based on information that we're getting from stakeholders and impacted communities, and not rely on this complaint, different process.

And, again, to try to get at some of the systemic, industry wide problems that we're facing.

-I'm Paris Jackson.

Thank you for watching The Newsfeed, your destination for nonprofit Northwest News.

Go to CascadePBS.org for more.