Itemized Wage Statements

California law seeks to enable employees to “promptly and easily determine” whether their employers have paid them appropriately or short changed them for their labor. Towards that end, most employers are required to provide each of their California employees with an accurate itemized wage statement on at least a semi-monthly basis. These wage statements must include the following nine categories of information: 

  1. gross wages earned; 

  2. total hours worked (with exceptions); 

  3. the number of piece-rate units earned and any applicable piece rate if the employee is paid on a piece-rate basis; 

  4. all deductions from pay; 

  5. net wages earned; 

  6. the dates of the period for which the employee is paid; 

  7. the name of the employee and the last four digits of her social security number or an employee identification number; 

  8. the name and address of the legal entity that is the employer (with additional information required for farm labor contractors); and 

  9. all applicable hourly rates in effect during the pay period and the corresponding number of hours worked at each hourly rate by the employee (with additional information required for temporary service employers). 

Cal. Lab. Code § 226 subd. (a).

The legislature has expressly carved out certain categories of employees for whom employers are not required to report the total number of hours worked. Workers who are excluded from that requirement including exempt administrative, executive, and professional employees, outside salespersons, salaried computer professionals, and other categories. However, the exclusion does not extend to commissioned (“inside”) sales employees. Cal. Lab. Code § 226 subd. (j).

Wage statements are critical for determining whether an employee receives fair and adequate pay, and for this reason, the government provides steep penalties for violations of the wage statement laws. Cal. Lab. Code §§ 226 subd. (e) & 226.3.

An employee may sue their employer individually or on a class-wide basis for statutory damages (sometimes called statutory penalties) if they suffer an “injury” as the result of their employer’s “knowing and intentional” failure to comply with Section 226 subd. (a). An employee who proves he or she has been injured by the knowing and intentional acts of an employer may recover the greater of the actual damages or fifty dollars ($50) for the initial pay period and one-hundred dollars ($100) for each subsequent pay period during which a violation occurs, not to exceed a total penalty of four-thousand dollars ($4,000). Cal. Lab. Code § 226 subd. (e).

The state, or an aggrieved employee standing in for the state pursuant to the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (PAGA), may sue for civil penalties under California Labor Code section 226.3. If the plaintiff proves the employer violated Section 226 subd. (a), the Court may award civil penalties in the amount of two-hundred-and-fifty dollars ($250) for the initial pay period and one-thousand dollars ($1,000) for each subsequent pay period during which a violation occurs. To prevail on a Section 226.3 claim plaintiff must only prove a violation of the Section 226 subd. (a) requirements. There is no requirement to show the employer’s failure was “knowing” or “intentional” or that the employee sustained an injury of the sort contemplated by Section 226 subd. (e). Lopez v. Friant & Associates, LLC, 15 Cal.App.5th 773 (2017).

Statutory penalties under California Labor Code section 226 subd. (e) and civil penalties under Section 226.3 for PAGA violations have one-year statutes of limitations.

Current and former employees have a right to inspect their wage stubs going three years back, and employers have 21 days to comply with such requests. Cal. Lab. Code § 226 subds. (a), (b), & (c).

If you would like to discuss a potential wage statement claim against your current or former employer, you may contact Terp Law for a consultation.