When you consider different types of theft that are very costly, you may think of things like people robbing a bank or a jewelry store. Maybe you think of people robbing personal homes and taking televisions and other electronics.
All of these things do happen, and they account for millions of dollars worth of losses every year. But the total is still far smaller than the amount of money that is simply stolen from employees by their employers. This is known as wage theft, and corporations are the biggest reason for financial theft annually.
Just one example: 3 times greater
To see how common this is, let’s look at an example, taking the numbers from 2012. One report found that there were almost 300,000 robberies during that year. All combined, these robberies impacted a total of just over $340 million. That’s the value that was lost, although some of those assets were certainly retained when the police caught the thieves.
On the other hand, victims of wage theft were able to recover $933 million. They did this in the same year, 2012. You can see quickly that this is roughly 3 times the value of everything that was stolen from homes and businesses.
Plus, most people who are victimized by wage theft either do not know what happened or do not know what steps to take to correct it. The vast majority of these cases go unreported, and so the money is never recovered. This means that even the $933 million that was recovered may merely be the tip of the iceberg.
What steps should you take?
As an employee, you have a right to the money that you have lawfully earned. If your employer has been violating that right, you may feel like you have no power, but you certainly do have many legal options.