Workers who are owed back wages recovered by the U.S. Department of Labor can claim them online, and the claim takes a Login.gov account and about six weeks. The department’s Wage and Hour Division, known as WHD, runs the process through its Workers Owed Wages tool.
All payments have been electronic since October 1, 2025. The department’s page lists no claim deadline.
What are the steps to claim recovered back wages?
The Labor Department’s Workers Owed Wages page lays out four steps. The first is to search for the employer in the WOW application. The second is to verify a name, which tells the worker whether wages are owed to them.
Third, the worker submits contact information so the department can email the Back Wage Claim Form, WH-60, and instructions. Fourth, the signed form and identity documents are uploaded, and the page says to create a Login.gov account “to securely upload your form.”
How long does the claim take?
The department says WHD processes the claim “within approximately six weeks” and then sends the owed wages. That clock covers WHD’s work on a submitted claim, so a worker who is slow with the form or documents adds time before it starts.
Under the update, anyone who currently receives back wages by paper check must confirm their details. The page says: “Starting October 1, 2025, all payments will be made electronically.”
Which identity documents does the department accept?
The page asks for one of several documents to be included with the form. The list is a Social Security card, an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number card, a driver’s license or state ID, or a W-2, pay stub or other documentation.
A worker with a pay stub or W-2 from the employer in question may already have what is needed. Anyone without any of these in hand can reach the department by phone before starting the upload.
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What happens if the money is never claimed?
If WHD cannot locate an employee, it holds the back wages for three years while it keeps searching. If the person is still not found after that, the money goes to the U.S. Treasury.
That three-year window is the closest thing to a deadline on the page. It is not a claim deadline for any one worker, and the department lists none, but wages left unclaimed do not wait forever.
Who can a worker call or write?
The Wage and Hour Division can be reached at 1-866-487-9243, which is also written 1-866-4-US-WAGE. The mailing address is 200 Constitution Ave NW, Washington, DC 20210. A Spanish version of the page is at dol.gov/agencies/whd/wow/espanol.
Workers who believe an employer owes them wages that have not been recovered can file a complaint through the department’s complaint page, at dol.gov/agencies/whd/contact/complaints. The WOW page is the free official route for claiming wages that have already been recovered.
The page prints no total held and no count of workers owed, so how many people have unclaimed wages is not published there. What it does publish is the path, and it is a short one: search the employer, verify the name, send the form, upload the documents.
The order matters. The employer search comes first, and the name check comes second, because the tool is what confirms whether wages are owed to that person at all. Only after that does the department email the WH-60 form, so a worker cannot skip ahead to the upload.
The email is also why the contact step is not a formality. The department sends the form and the instructions to the address the worker submits, and the signed copy goes back through the Login.gov upload along with one of the identity documents listed above.
Looking for other money already set aside for retirees?
Back wages are one place where money is held for someone who has not yet claimed it. Retirees who miss the same kind of step in other programs can leave benefits unused, often because the income limit or the phone number was hard to find.
The Benefits Checklist scans 11 benefit programs with the 2026 income limits and a 50-state phone directory, and a printable tracker comes with the download to keep each application straight.
Get the 2026 income limits for 11 benefit programs in the Benefits Checklist →
More Financial Reading
- 21 Ways to Stretch a $2,087 Social Security Check
- 15 Places to Find Your Share of the $4.25 Billion States Give Back
- 15 Ways Retirees Are Tapping a Record $14.9 Trillion in Home Equity
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
