As part of the annual budgeting cycle, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has offered employers a window into its compliance priorities and initiatives, which continue to focus on directed investigations initiated by the DOL in “high risk” industries and so-called “fissured workplaces.” The insights come courtesy of the DOL Wage and Hour Division's (WHD) fiscal year 2016 Budget Justification, as well as Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez's testimony at hearings in March before the U.S. House of Representatives' Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee, and the House Education and the Workforce Committee.

Notably, the WHD requested a budget increase of nearly $50 million for FY 2016. As part of the proposed increase, the DOL seeks to hire hundreds of additional enforcement staff to step up its investigative efforts. The DOL's investigative initiatives already have yielded the recovery of over $1.3 billion in back wages for 1.5 million workers since 2009.

Over the last several years, the DOL's WHD has moved from a complaint-driven process toward a more proactive enforcement strategy. In FY 2014, nearly half (44 percent) of the DOL's investigations were directed, up from 27 percent in FY 2010. In its Congressional Budget Justification, the WHD also touted its reduction in the percent of investigations (both directed and complaint-driven) that resulted in a finding of no violation, which in FY 2014 hovered around 20 percent. The WHD attributed this number to its “careful selection of workplaces with the greatest problems.”