The number of federal labor investigators hit a 52-year low in the U.S.

The number of federal investigators tasked with ensuring labor laws are enforced across the country has shrunk to an all-time low, according to new data.

Researchers from Rutgers University and Northwestern University published a data brief in May which includes a survey of labor research as well as the new finding on the number of investigators in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.

“The Wage and Hour Division has been cut off at the knees for years and it just got significantly worse,” said brief co-author Janice Fine, director of the Rutgers University branch of the Workplace Justice Lab.

According to the brief, the U.S. Wage and Hour Division had 611 investigators in May, down from a peak of 1,232 investigators in 1978. The current number of investigators is the lowest in the last 52 years, the farthest back that data is consistently available.

Pennsylvania had 27 federal labor investigators in May, the report said. That’s about one investigator per every 242,000 workers — slightly better than the national average of one investigator per 278,000 workers.

California, the state with the most investigators, had 74, while New Jersey had 19 and Delaware had none.

The situation in Pennsylvania is “slightly better than in other states,” said Jake Barnes, research project manager at the Workplace Justice Lab. Still, given the ratio of workers to investigators, it could be argued that investigators “can’t adequately enforce these laws.”

The data came directly from the Wage and Hour division, said Barnes.

“Wage theft is rife in industries that already pay too little to live on,” Fine said. “When government is starved of enforcement resources, it is too easy for unscrupulous employers to commit flagrant violations of labor and employment laws.”

The report contrasted the resources put toward the enforcement of wage-and-hour law with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s budget. ICE’s 2024 budget for “enforcement and removal operations” was nearly 15 times that of the Wage and Hour Division’s budget, the brief said.

With a similar amount of money, “it is possible the [Wage and Hour Division] could recover more than $4 billion for workers per year,” the brief said.

“The problem of job degradation in the U.S. can’t be addressed through mass deportations, and really what we need is more resources and attention to the enforcement of labor and employment standards at the national and state levels,” Barnes said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

The current count of 611 investigators could be an overestimate, the report noted, because some may be taking a deferred resignation offer put out by President Donald Trump’s administration. As part of its efforts to shrink and reshape the federal workforce, the administration has given federal employees the option to leave their jobs with several months’ pay.

Bloomberg Law reported in April that over 2,700 employees of the U.S. Department of Labor had agreed to leave the agency through deferred resignation.

The report does not explain why the division has fewer investigators now than it did several decades ago. Barnes noted that the department’s budget has grown in recent years but has not kept pace with the growth of the American workforce.

The U.S. Department of Labor did not respond to a request for comment.

“The ratio of workers to investigators has really skyrocketed in years, making it just more and more difficult for the division to do its job as it’s gotten more laws to implement and enforce,” said Barnes.

In Philadelphia, labor advocates have argued for more staffing for the city’s own labor department as Philadelphia City Council has passed more labor laws for them to enforce in recent years. Those include a wage theft ordinance, a paid sick leave requirement, and a domestic workers’ bill of rights.

Last month, Council passed the POWER Act, aiming to make worker protection laws more enforceable.

“These laws are meaningless unless we have the tools to enforce them,” Councilmember Kendra Brooks said in an April hearing on the bill.

U.S. Department of Labor investigations in Pennsylvania last year included several probes of home healthcare companies, which ultimately found failure to pay employees properly for overtime. Home health employers in Montgomery County, Delaware County, and North Philadelphia were all ordered to back-pay workers after the Wage and Hour Division found violations.