According to U.S. Census and earnings data from New York and California, 3 to 6 percent of all workers covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act experience minimum wage violations.  Secretary of Labor, Tom Perez, in his blog post, Enforcement Matters, Wage Violations, Workers and the Economy, asserts that enforcement matters. It is essential to creating shared prosperity and building a strong economy that works for everyone.  It is also essential to advancing economic justice, addressing income inequality and ensuring that hard work is rewarded with a fair wage.

If you work hard and play by the rules, then you should be able to earn enough to take care of yourself and your family – that’s a core American value. But for too many people, their hard work isn’t reflected in their paychecks. In many cases, workers aren’t being fully and properly paid for all the hours they put in on the job. The Labor Department recently commissioned a research study on minimum wage violations in two states that demonstrates exactly that. But we are committed to using our enforcement tools to ensure workers get the wages that are rightfully theirs.

Using U.S. Census and earnings data from New York and California, this new study shows that many workers are earning a de facto minimum wage below the legal floor. Unscrupulous employers push their workers into poverty when they fail to pay what the law requires.

In those states, roughly 3 to 6 percent of all workers covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act experience minimum wage violations – translating into a total of between $20 and $29 million in lost weekly income. That represents 40 percent or more of their total pay. Imagine if 40 cents out of every dollar you earned didn’t show up in your paycheck but in your employer’s pocket. For every hour of tough, on-your-feet work looking after children, cleaning homes, making hotel beds, preparing food in a restaurant or picking crops in a field, it’s possible you could be working 24 minutes for free. That’s just wrong.

It’s difficult to extrapolate what these figures mean on a broader scale around the country. But using conservative estimates, let’s say the national violation rate is half what it is in New York and California – that would mean 2 million workers a month are getting ripped off.

The implications are manifold. The worker and her family, of course, take it on the chin when she brings home a smaller paycheck. But less money in workers’ pockets also means less consumer spending, which stifles economic growth. Law-abiding businesses are unfairly undercut by competitors who flout the law. Lower incomes mean smaller payroll tax contributions to programs like Social Security and Medicare. And taxpayers feel the squeeze as more people are forced to rely on public services like food stamps and Medicaid.

The take away here is that enforcement matters. It’s critical that we use the full strength of the Labor Department’s enforcement authority to investigate violations and recoup back wages for workers.

Under President Obama’s leadership, we are strategically deploying our resources and putting more cops on the beat to protect working families. Since 2009, we’ve recovered more than a billion dollars for more than 1.2 million workers. That’s not chump change. That’s real money, which means working families can now afford school supplies, weekly groceries or basic holiday gifts.

President Obama knows that we must keep at it. In his budget request to Congress, he has asked for more Wage and Hour Division investigators. But we aren’t stopping there. We’re investigating strategically with the resources we already have by leveraging our understanding of industries and business models to increase compliance, and assessing liquidated damages and civil money penalties when we find violations so that employers know we mean business. And through outreach, we’re seeking to empower workers by educating them about their rights in a dramatically changed 21^st century workplace.

Enforcement matters. It is essential to creating shared prosperity and building a strong economy that works for everyone. It is a high priority for us at the Labor Department — because it is essential to advancing economic justice, addressing income inequality and ensuring that hard work is rewarded with a fair wage.

Follow Secretary Perez on Twitter, @LaborSec.