Pennsylvania Is Investigating Home Care Agencies Over Wages

What Pennsylvania's new wage enforcement initiative means for caregivers, for families, and for the agencies that already do this right

Has a caregiver ever asked you whether the drive between two clients counts as paid time?

Or whether thirty hours with one client and twenty with another adds up to overtime? Or why the overnight shift pays for six hours when they were in the house for nine?

If you schedule care, run an agency, coordinate discharges, or work anywhere near direct care workers, someone has asked you at least one of those. And if you're the caregiver who asked, there's a fair chance the answer came back vague, or came back as a no, and you let it go because pushing further felt like it might cost you hours.

As of September 2, those questions are being asked by the Commonwealth — and it isn't waiting for anyone to file a complaint first.

What was announced

L&I launched an enforcement initiative called Standing Up for Home Care Workers, run through its Bureau of Labor Law Compliance. The announcement came at a press conference in Philadelphia alongside the Departments of Human Services and Aging, SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, worker advocates, and home care workers themselves.

The mechanics are the part worth understanding:

• The Bureau has begun sending notices to home care agencies opening investigations into potential wage violations
• Those investigations cover agencies employing an estimated 100,000 home care workers across Pennsylvania
• They will examine whether covered workers were paid for all hours worked, including overtime where the law requires it
• The state is working with other agencies, unions, advocates, care recipients and community organizations to identify where problems are

Almost every wage investigation in Pennsylvania starts because one worker filed a complaint. This one doesn't. The state selected agencies and opened the files itself.

The number behind it

Roughly 40 percent of all Minimum Wage Act complaints in Pennsylvania come from home care workers.

Home care is not 40 percent of Pennsylvania's workforce. It isn't close. And L&I's own release says those complaints represent only a small fraction of what's happening in the industry — which is a reasonable read, because filing a wage complaint against your employer requires knowing the law was broken, knowing where to file, and being willing to risk your schedule while you wait.

Most people doing this work are not in a position to take that risk. That is precisely why complaint-driven enforcement was missing so much of it.

What the violations actually look like

L&I names the categories officially: unpaid overtime, unpaid hours worked, improper overtime calculations, inaccurate records, and other pay practices that leave workers short.

Reporting on the announcement has described more specific patterns — overtime owed when a caregiver's hours span two different clients, sleep time being deducted from on-duty hours, and travel between clients during a shift going unpaid. Those examples come from press coverage rather than from the department's written release, so treat them as illustration rather than as official guidance.

None of them are exotic. They are the ordinary ways hours go missing when scheduling is complicated and nobody is watching closely.

If you are a caregiver

Under Pennsylvania law, most home care workers employed by third-party agencies are covered by state minimum wage and overtime protections. Covered workers must receive at least minimum wage for every hour worked, and overtime past forty hours in a week.

L&I has published plain-language Know Your Rights guidance and a fact sheet written for both workers and employers. Both are short, and both are free.

A practical suggestion, worth more than any of this: keep your own record. Start times, end times, mileage, which client, and any hour you worked that you were told not to write down. Do it in a notebook or your phone, whichever you'll actually keep up. Wage cases turn on records, and if the only records are your employer's, you are relying on the accuracy of the thing in dispute.

If you are a family arranging care

This one surprises people, so it's worth saying plainly.

When you hire a caregiver through an agency, the agency is the employer. Wages, overtime, payroll taxes, workers' compensation, supervision and scheduling are the agency's legal responsibility, and the rate you're quoted is supposed to cover all of it.

When you hire someone directly — through a registry, a referral, a neighbor's recommendation, anything where the money goes from your hand to theirs — the employment relationship is between you and that person. That arrangement is entirely legitimate and a great many Pennsylvania families use it. But it does mean the wage and hour questions become yours, and they are worth asking a payroll professional or an employment attorney about before the first shift rather than after the first problem.

Either way, one question is worth asking any provider you talk to: who is the caregiver's employer, and who is responsible for paying overtime? A provider who can answer that cleanly in one sentence is telling you something useful about how they operate.

Why an agency would welcome this

There's a line in L&I's release that didn't make the headlines. It says that when workers aren't paid properly, one effect is to put employers who do follow the law at a competitive disadvantage.

That is exactly right, and anyone who has priced this work knows it.

When you pay overtime, carry workers' compensation, run real payroll, pay for training hours and cover travel between clients, your hourly rate reflects those costs. A competitor who quietly skips some of them can quote a lower number, and to a family comparing two prices on a Thursday afternoon, the cheaper one simply looks like the better deal. Nothing on the quote explains the difference. Enforcement is one of the few things that closes that gap.

Gilgal operates as both a licensed home care agency and a licensed home care registry under 28 Pa. Code Chapter 611. Caregivers on our agency side are our employees, paid through payroll with overtime and workers' compensation. We think families deserve to know which structure they're buying, and what each one makes us responsible for.

What happens next

Notices are going out now. Investigations take time, and L&I has said it intends to pair enforcement with outreach and education for employers — so the point isn't only penalties, it's getting practices corrected.

If you're a caregiver who suspects hours have gone unpaid, you don't have to wait to see whether your agency is one of the ones selected. You can file a complaint with the Bureau of Labor Law Compliance yourself.

And if you're a family who has been quietly wondering whether the price you were quoted was too good to be true — that instinct is worth listening to. Ask who the employer is. Ask how overtime is handled. The answer usually arrives fast.

Home Care 101

Free and online. Saturday, September 12.

A free session for Pennsylvania families covering what home care actually costs and why, how agency and registry structures differ, where Medicaid and other funding fit, and the questions worth asking before you bring anyone into your home. The employer question above is one we spend real time on.

Register for Home Care 101

If you'd rather just talk through a specific situation, the introductory call is free, fifteen minutes, and carries no obligation. You can book one here.

Sources

• PA Department of Labor & Industry — Shapiro Administration Launches Strategic Enforcement Initiative to Protect Home Care Workers' Rights, September 2, 2026
• L&I — Know Your Rights: Home Care Workers
• L&I — Minimum Wage Act Fact Sheet: Home Care

This article describes a state enforcement initiative and general legal requirements. It is not legal advice. For questions about a specific employment or hiring arrangement, consult an employment attorney or a payroll professional.

Gilgal Home Care & Registry · Pennsylvania licensed home care agency and registry
Serving Montgomery, Chester, Delaware, Bucks & Philadelphia counties