DENVER — The City and County of Denver Auditor’s Office announced Monday that it has recovered a record $2.31 million in restitution and helped 7,200 workers get unpaid wages in the 2025 reporting year that ended Oct. 31.
Denver Labor, a city division that enforces wage and hour laws within the City and County of Denver, stated that this marks a 60% increase in the number of workers it assisted compared to the previous year.
"I think that the most important takeaway from this is not only that we collected $2.3 million which is a little shy of a quarter million more than we collected last year, but we enforced the rights of 7,200 workers," said Matthew Fritz-Mauer, executive director of the Denver Labor division of the Denver Auditor's Office. "That second number in particular, those are lives touched by our work, and that is significantly higher than our last record set last year, which was about 4,500 workers."
Fritz-Mauer said workers in certain industries and from underserved communities are more at risk of wage theft.
"People of color, women, people with less formal education, people who work in kind of the underground economy in isolated ways, like day laborers or sex workers, like strippers, they are more likely to experience wage theft," Fritz-Mauer said.
Fritz-Mauer there are two ways Denver Labor can open a wage theft case, including a complaint from a worker and agency-driven proactive investigations.
"The biggest reason people don't come forward is because they're afraid of retaliation. And when you have large numbers of people in Denver and, really, in America, living paycheck to paycheck. The threat of being fired, of having your hours cut — is existential, right?" Fritz-mauer said.
The Denver auditor said Monday wage theft is an ongoing problem for Denver.
“The more resources we have, the more money we recover for workers and the more people we can help,” Denver Auditor Timothy M. O’Brien, CPA, said in a news release.
The division said it closed 859 cases and audited over 100,000 payroll records, uncovering violations across several industries, including the following:
- Steakhouse restaurant – $70,010.71 for 44 workers paid below minimum wage.
- Real estate company – $28,803.09 for two employees paid below minimum wage.
- Nail salon – $27,794 for 14 employees paid below minimum wage.
- Barbershop – $23,240.76 for 21 workers whose tip credits were illegally claimed.
- Yoga studio – $16,509 for 66 employees who had sick leave pay violations.
Denver Labor reported that investigations into gig app companies increased in 2025, uncovering various violations, including the misclassification of workers at Veryable and Qwick as independent contractors.
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