DOL Enforcement Rollup — Employer Wage-Theft & Repeat-Violator API

Turn the U.S. Department of Labor's raw enforcement database into per-employer intelligence. This actor pulls Wage and Hour Division (WHD) compliance actions — every concluded case since FY 2005, with back wages, civil money penalties, employees affected, and repeat/willful flags — and rolls them up by employer so you instantly see who the repeat wage-theft offenders are, how much they owe, and across which statutes.

Most tools give you a flat case dump. The value here is the transform: normalized employer names, summed back wages and penalties across a company's entire case history, finding date ranges, a derived "dominant statute" per case, and a repeat_violator flag — plus optional ERISA/EBSA penalty cases merged into the same employer view.

Who it's for

• Employment & plaintiff-side labor attorneys — spot repeat FLSA/overtime violators and quantify exposure before intake or discovery.
• Unions & worker centers — target organizing and enforcement campaigns at chronic wage-theft employers by industry and state.
• ESG / HR-risk & vendor-screening teams — screen suppliers, contractors, and acquisition targets for labor-law enforcement history.
• Insurers & underwriters (EPLI) — price employment-practices risk using an employer's real DOL enforcement footprint.
• Investigative journalists & researchers — rank the biggest offenders by back wages, employees affected, or case count.

Data source

• WHD (enforcement) — Wage and Hour Division compliance actions via the DOL Open Data API v4 (apiprod.dol.gov). Covers FLSA, Davis-Bacon, Service Contract Act, H-1B/H-2A/H-2B, FMLA, child labor, and more.
• EBSA (opt-in) — ERISA Form 5500 penalty cases (OCATS).
• OFCCP — scaffolded for a future release.

API key (free, required)

The DOL data endpoint requires a free key. Register at https://dataportal.dol.gov/registration (instant), then paste it into the apiKey input (or set the DOL_API_KEY environment variable). The dataset catalog is public; the record data is not, so the key is mandatory.

Example input

{
  "apiKey": "YOUR_DOL_API_KEY",
  "mode": "rollup",
  "state": "CA",
  "naics": "722",
  "sinceDate": "2022-01-01",
  "repeatThreshold": 1,
  "maxResults": 5000
}

This returns per-employer rollups for California food-service employers (NAICS 722*) with findings after 2022-01-01, flagging any employer with more than one case as a repeat violator.

Switch "mode": "cases" to get one normalized row per individual enforcement case instead of the employer aggregate.

Output fields

Per-employer rollup (mode: "rollup"): employer_name, agency, agencies[], naics, naics_description, city, state, total_cases, total_back_wages, total_civil_penalties, total_employees, total_violations, first_finding, last_finding, repeat_violator, source_url, retrieved_at.

Per-case (mode: "cases"): employer_name, agency, case_id, naics, naics_description, city, state, zip, back_wages, civil_penalty, employees_affected, violation_count, violation_type, repeat_violator_flag, finding_start_date, finding_end_date, source_url, retrieved_at.

Use as an MCP tool

This actor is callable by AI agents (Claude, Cursor, etc.) via mcp.apify.com. The clean, field-level output schema makes it a chainable tool: an agent can ask for "repeat wage-theft violators in Texas construction since 2023" and pipe the rolled-up employers straight into a brief, a risk score, or a spreadsheet.

FAQ

How do I find repeat wage-theft violators? Run in rollup mode; every row has a repeat_violator flag and total_cases / total_back_wages so you can sort by worst offender. Lower repeatThreshold to 0 to flag any employer with a case.

Does it include civil money penalties, not just back wages? Yes — civil_penalty (per case) and total_civil_penalties (per employer) sum the CMP columns across every statute (FLSA, MSPA, H-1B, child labor, OSHA-referred, etc.).

Can I filter by industry? Yes — pass a naics prefix (e.g. "23" for construction, "722" for restaurants).

How far back does the data go? WHD compliance actions cover concluded cases since fiscal year 2005.

Is this official DOL data? Yes — it comes directly from the DOL Open Data API. Findings dates are not the same as case open/close dates (per DOL's data notes).

Do I need to pay DOL? No. The DOL API key is free; this actor bills only for the result rows it returns to you.