Over the past six years or so, wage and hour lawsuits have become, if not commonplace, extremely prevalent. This trend, fueled by a large number of workers displaced following the financial crisis and stoked by successful settlements and court rulings over the past several years, is unlikely to end anytime soon.
According to the consulting firm NERA Economic Consulting, wage and hour settlements for U.S. companies totaled $467 million in 2012, consistent with past years. Companies, on average, paid $4.8 million in order to resolve a case in 2012, which is slightly higher than the $4.6 million companies paid in 2011. Furthermore, the median settlement value for wage and hour cases in 2012 was $1.7 million. Finally, overtime claims were the most prevalent in 2012, equaling 40 percent of the allegations examined by the NERA Economic Consulting study. Since 2007, overtime, misclassification, and donning and doffing claims have remained constant. Figure 1 shows a breakdown of wage and hour allegations brought in 2012, from NERA Economic Consulting’s survey: