Every payday, California employers must hand you an itemized wage statement showing nine specific things: gross wages, total hours, all deductions, net pay, the pay period dates, your name and the last four of your Social Security number (or employee ID), the employer’s full legal name and address, and all hourly rates with the hours worked at each rate (Labor Code §226(a)).
No stub at all? Stub missing the employer’s real legal name — the one you would need to sue them? Hours that never match reality? Each of those is a violation, and the penalty is automatic: $50 for the first pay period and $100 for every pay period after that, capped at $4,000 per worker (§226(e)).
This is often the easiest money in a wage claim, because the violation is proven by the stub itself — or by its absence. It also tells you something about your employer: companies that hide the legal name and the hours on the stub are almost always hiding bigger violations behind it. In enforcement actions, wage statement violations ride along with unpaid overtime and misclassification nearly every time.
One catch: the penalty reaches back only one year from the day you file. Every pay period that passes, an older one falls off the table. Save every stub you have — and if you have none, that fact itself is the evidence.
Think this is happening to you? Use the free Wage Claim Builder to turn it into a dollar figure and a filed claim in 10 minutes, or report the business confidentially. Filing is free, retaliation is illegal (Labor Code §98.6), and your immigration status does not matter.
