More than 7,000 Georgians owed unpaid wages. Search to see if you are among them

More than 7,000 Georgians are owed money that is just waiting to be collected.

The U.S. Department of Labor is holding on to millions of dollars in unpaid wages that it has recovered in investigations and it wants to get it back to the employees it belongs to.

“We want this money to go back to the people who have worked for it,” Karla Falcon from the US Department of Labor told Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Justin Gray.

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It’s money employees earned but never received.

Most of them likely have no idea they were underpaid or are owed back wages.

That’s why the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division is asking people to go to their website and search by their past employers to see if they are owed money.

We’re talking about more than 222,000 workers owed more than $160 million nationwide.

In Georgia, 7,131 workers are owed $2,231,510.

The DOL investigates violations of things like overtime or minimum wage laws when they receive complaints.

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But often, by the time the investigation is over, workers have moved and DOL has bad addresses or contact information for them.

“So, a top priority for the wage and hour division is to ensure that workers get the money that they’ve earned. However, a substantial amount of this money is unrecovered by workers because we cannot locate them,” Falcon said.

This is time-sensitive.

By federal law, the DOL can only hold onto the money for three years before turning it over to the US Treasury.

Visit their website to search for your employer and see if you are owed money.

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