Along with rising temperatures comes another surge of sorts: According to Seyfarth Shaw, the 2013-14 period reached a record high for federal wage and hour lawsuits filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The firm compiled a chart, based on information from the Federal Judicial Center, showing cases surpassed 8,000 for the first time, coming in at 8,126, more than 5 percent from 2012-13, which saw 7,764 cases filed.
This presents a dramatic increase in suits over the past 24 years. In 1990, there were only 1,257 federal wage and hour claims, demonstrating a 438 percent increase over the past decade and a half. In a statement, the chairman of the firm’s wage and hour litigation practice, Richard Alfred, said that, “while the rise we’ve seen in FLSA cases is astonishing, these numbers are also just one part of the equation. They would be even higher if wage and hour lawsuits filed in state courts under state pay practices, data which isn’t readily available, were added.”
