Since Trump took office for his second term, we have seen an unprecedented abandonment of America’s workers. The Trump administration has eliminated many of the federal government workers needed to enforce worker protection laws and is instead using the limited enforcement resources that remain to further their narrow ideological agenda. These choices mean less money in the pockets of America’s workers at a time when the costs of necessities are rising and every dollar counts. Here are just five of the ways the Trump administration is making it easier for your boss to rob you of the money you earn.
1. Refusing to enforce laws that ensure your boss isn’t stealing your wages.
Wage theft, or an employers’ failure to pay workers money they are legally entitled to, accounts for an estimated $15 billion in lost wages each year. Between 2021 and 2023, federal, state and local governments recovered over $1.5 billion in stolen wages for workers. Unfortunately, this progress has been decimated under the Trump administration, which oversaw a 97 percent drop in wage theft cases under the US Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.
2. Prioritizing complaints from white men at the expense of women, LGBTQ people, workers of color, and federal contractors, resulting in a loss of $62.5 million dollars in remedies for workers.
In FY 2024, through pre-litigation enforcement and litigation, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recovered a total of nearly $700 million for workers who had been discriminated against on the job. In FY 2025 that number dropped to nearly $660 million, $40 million less than the previous year. While the total amount recovered dropped, the number of complaints the EEOC received remained consistent, with 88,531 new charges received in FY 2024 and 88,201 received in FY 2025. The New York Times revealed that this inconsistency is likely due to pressure on the agency’s staff to fast track cases not rooted in the law, which have a lower likelihood of success. Examples of these new priorities include rooting out lawful diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, eliminating protections for transgender workers and overfocusing on religious discrimination with emphasis on opposition to vaccine mandates and the administration’s definition of antisemitism. In a departure from past practice, the agency has worked to actively seek out claims that fit Trump’s priorities by imploring white men to submit claims. In addition to the Trump administration’s priorities undermining the EEOC’s enforcement, President Trump rescinded a historic Executive Order (EO 11246) which protected employees of federal contractors from discrimination. In FY 2024, OFCCP recovered $22.5 million for federal contract workers who faced discrimination on the job. In FY 2025, that amount was $0. While the EEOC also has authority to investigate complaints from federal contractors, its performance report does not mention any enforcement actions involving federal contractors.
3. Ignoring racial discrimination and cutting lawsuits by 85 percent, leading to $13 million less for workers through litigation.
Lawsuits are directed by the EEOC Commissioners, and Chair Andrea Lucas, who has been clear that she shares Trump’s priorities. Despite race and sex discrimination historically accounting for the largest volume of wage discrimination complaints (outside of retaliation) the EEOC receives,* the EEOC only filed 2 lawsuits alleging racial discrimination in all of FY 2025, more than an 85 percent decrease from FY 2024. Chair Lucas also oversaw a nearly 20 percent drop in lawsuits filed involving sex discrimination. While Chair Lucas eliminated guidance on workplace harassment and oversaw 26 percent fewer lawsuits alleging harassment in FY 2025, she filed three times as many lawsuits alleging religious discrimination than in FY 2024.
4. Prioritizing politically motivated religious liberty claims over other workers.
While some workers have legally relevant religious objections to vaccine mandates, the EEOC has gone from finding 4 percent of these claims valid to making them the near singular focus of religious discrimination enforcement. Since January 2025, the EEOC recovered $18.95 million for workers who refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine out of the total $22.8 million it has recovered in religious discrimination matters. The EEOC also joined the Trump administration’s politically motivated attack on Columbia University, which accounts for $21 million, but EEOC reporting makes it unclear if this sum is included in its reporting on money recovered in religious discrimination.
5. Decimating the federal workforce responsible for holding employers accountable and upholding workers’ rights, including those of federal workers.
There are 23 percent fewer EEOC employees today than in FY 2024 to enforce worker protections. House Republican appropriators are proposing over $55 million in cuts to the EEOC’s budget. If those cuts are enacted, the EEOC will have even fewer workers enforcing these laws. The EEOC has also decimated federal workers’ rights, recovering over $86 million less for federal workers who experienced discrimination in FY 2025 than in FY 2024.
* data on file with author from July 3, 2023 email from the EEOC
