How the verdict is computed — in the open

Every figure the checker prints comes from a published statute, a formula below, and your answers. Nothing is estimated from "typical cases," and the dataset's rules-checked date is printed on every verdict.

The five steps

1. The owed-by date. Your state's rule for how the job ended: immediately, a count of calendar or business days, the next regular payday, or — Minnesota — the moment you demand the wages in writing. Business days skip weekends; state holidays are not counted either way (agencies differ, and the method refuses to pretend otherwise).
2. Days late. Today minus the owed-by date. Negative means the clock hasn't started — the verdict says "not yet due" and shows the date instead of a penalty.
3. The penalty. Your state's formula, applied to your numbers: per-day wages (your rate × your usual hours), percentage-per-day or per-month damages, flat liquidated damages, or the trigger amounts in demand states. Where the statute caps the penalty, the verdict shows the ceiling. Where a state has no automatic penalty, the verdict prints None and the remedy that exists instead — never an invented number.
4. The vacation verdict. Your state's class — required, policy-decides, or silent — applied to your accrued hours at your rate. Required-class dollars join the total; policy-class dollars are shown as "if your policy promises it," because that is the truth of them.
5. The total and the next step. Wages + penalty-to-date + counted vacation. Then the step your state rewards next: the written demand where the demand is the trigger, or the free agency claim — with its filing deadline where the statute fixes one.

The honesty rails

• Penalties are statutory maximums. Where a penalty requires a willful failure (California §203 is the famous one), a genuine good-faith dispute over the amount is a defense — the verdict names the condition in the same breath as the number.
• The dataset is anchored to each state's statute text and labor-agency page, and is re-checked quarterly. Any verified error is corrected and re-stamped; two in a quarter pauses kit sales until a full re-verification passes.
• This is general information, not legal advice. The checker never asks your name and never receives your answers — the math runs in your browser.

Sources

State statutes and labor agencies, cited on every state page and every verdict — start from the state index. Federal floor: the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, which sets no federal final-pay deadline — the regular-payday standard used on the four no-law state pages.