One of the bills to emerge from Colorado’s eventful legislative session was House Bill 25-1001, which strengthened worker protections against wage theft and enforced overtime laws. While several groups support the bill’s goal, others are concerned about the impact of stricter penalties on small businesses.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed House Bill 25-1001 into law in mid-May after vetoing a different wage theft bill in 2024 that focused specifically on the construction sector. Sponsors of the 2025 bill, all Democrats, have been working with Polis’ team since summer 2024 to address the governor’s concerns in their new bill.
An estimated $728 million in wages are stolen from nearly 440,000 workers each year in Colorado, according to a 2022 comprehensive analysis by the Colorado Fiscal Institute.
Wage theft can include not paying workers minimum wage, non-payment of wages and misclassifying workers as independent contractors to avoid paying overtime. The bill increases enforcement for each of these issues.
It also creates several changes to how victims of wage theft recover stolen wages and how employers are held accountable. The new law outlaws pay deductions below minimum wage. It also increases the cap for wage theft claims to $13,000 with room for inflation adjustments and expedites the process to pay wage theft victims more quickly and punish employers.
While many of the penalties listed in the bill are for offenses that are already...
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