About wagetheftcalc.com
wagetheftcalc.com is a free wage-and-hour resource maintained by The Click Lab. Our wage theft calculator and guides help workers figure out whether they're owed money under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and state wage law — unpaid overtime, minimum wage shortfalls, illegal deductions, stolen tips, and misclassification that quietly cuts into a paycheck. The Site is built for someone staring at a pay stub that doesn't add up and wanting a plain-English starting point before raising it with payroll, filing a complaint, or talking to an attorney.
What we do
We translate the FLSA, Department of Labor regulations, and state wage statutes into a plain-English calculator and guides. Every page is reviewed by our editorial team with citations to DOL regulations, Wage and Hour Division guidance, and state labor codes. The calculator estimates back wages and liquidated damages across the violation types that make up most wage theft claims — unpaid overtime, minimum wage violations, off-the-clock work, tip theft, and misclassification — then layers in state-law multipliers where a state provides a stronger remedy than the federal floor.
Who this calculator is for
Most visitors fall into one of a few groups: hourly workers who suspect a paycheck is short and want to know what the shortfall might actually be worth once liquidated damages and lookback periods are factored in; salaried and misclassified workers trying to figure out whether they should have been getting overtime all along; tipped workers wondering whether a tip pool or service-charge practice crossed a legal line; and small-business owners or managers trying to get pay practices right before a mistake becomes a claim. We built the Site around these use cases, which is why every guide leads with a plain-English answer before it gets into statutory detail.
How the estimate is built
The full mechanics — how back wages are calculated for each violation type, how liquidated damages double a federal recovery absent a good-faith defense, the lookback periods under the FLSA and various state statutes, and the states with double- or triple-damages multipliers — are documented on our methodology page. At a high level: the calculator estimates the weekly shortfall from the selected violation type, multiplies it by the number of weeks in the lookback period, then applies FLSA liquidated damages or a state-law multiplier, whichever the user selects, to produce a total estimated recovery.
What we don’t do
We don't provide legal advice, and nothing on this Site creates an attorney-client relationship. Whether you're actually owed unpaid wages depends on your exemption status, your employer's exact pay practices, your state's specific statute, and records neither you nor we may have in front of us — details no calculator can fully account for. We also don't evaluate individual wage disputes, review specific pay stubs or timesheets, or file claims on anyone's behalf. Our editorial content doesn't recommend particular attorneys or law firms, though the homepage separately offers an optional case-review form that connects you with attorneys in our network — see our privacy policy for what's shared if you use it. For your specific situation, consult a licensed employment attorney or your state labor agency; see our contact page for pointers on finding the right one.
Editorial standards
Every guide and reference page is written from primary sources — the FLSA and its implementing regulations, Wage and Hour Division opinion letters and fact sheets, and state labor codes and agency guidance — and reviewed before publication. We don't publish thin content: each page is meant to answer a specific question a worker would actually ask, with enough detail to be genuinely useful when a paycheck doesn't add up. Our full editorial workflow, contributor backgrounds, and sourcing policy are on the editorial team page.
How we make money
Display advertising via Google AdSense. No law firm or payroll-tech company pays for placement or a favorable mention in our editorial content. Separately, the homepage offers an optional case-review form: if you submit it, your information is shared with attorneys who may compensate The Click Lab Agency LLC for the referral. That's a disclosed advertising product, not an editorial placement. See our privacy policy for details on data handling, including exactly what's shared if you use that form.
Contact
Questions, corrections, or feedback: see our contact page.