What Pennsylvania Home Care Agencies Should Review Before an Investigation.
On September 2, 2026, the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry (“DOLI”) announced “Standing Up for Home Care Workers,” a statewide enforcement initiative aimed at ensuring that home-care employees receive all wages and overtime owed under Pennsylvania law – meaning, home care agencies should prepare for increased wage and hour scrutiny.
Unlike the traditional complaint-driven enforcement model, the new initiative expressly calls for proactive investigations of home-care agencies and other third-party employers. According to the DOLI, the Bureau of Labor Law Compliance has already begun sending investigative notices to agencies. The investigations will focus on unpaid working time, overtime, regular-rate calculations, and recordkeeping. This initiative signals that home care wage compliance is now an affirmative enforcement priority for the Commonwealth.
Why Home-Care Employers Are Receiving Special Attention
The DOLI reports that approximately 40% of the complaints it receives under the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act involve home care workers. Those complaints frequently allege:
- Unpaid overtime;
- Work performed before or after recorded shifts;
- Improper deductions for meals or sleep periods;
- Failure to compensate travel between clients;
- Incorrect regular-rate calculations; and
- Inaccurate or incomplete time and payroll records.
Home care operations can create wage and hour risks that are less common in a conventional workplace. Employees may travel among multiple clients, work overnight or extended shifts, respond to client needs during scheduled breaks, complete documentation outside scheduled hours, or communicate with supervisors and family members before or after a visit. Electronic visit-verification systems may document when an employee entered or left a client’s home without capturing all compensable activities surrounding the visit. The practical result is that a schedule, client-service authorization, or electronic visit record may not necessarily reflect the employee’s complete compensable workday.
Pennsylvania Law Covers Most Agency-Employed Home-Care Workers
The Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act (the “Act”) generally requires covered employees to receive at least the applicable minimum wage for all hours worked and overtime at one-and-one-half times their regular rate for hours exceeding 40 in a work week. Although the Act contains an exemption for domestic services performed in or about the private home of the employer, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has held that a third-party employer, such as a home care agency, cannot claim that exemption for employees it assigns to clients’ homes. Accordingly, home health aides, personal-care aides, direct-care workers, and similar employees generally remain covered when employed by an agency, registry, staffing company, or other third party.
The DOLI’s recently issued home care wage guidance identifies several compliance principles:
- All hours worked must be compensated, including time during which an employee must remain at a particular location and is not completely relieved of duty.
- Hours worked for multiple clients through the same employer must be aggregated when determining overtime.
- Travel between clients during the workday is compensable, although ordinary home-to-work commuting generally is not.
- For shifts lasting fewer than 24 hours, sleep time may not be deducted even if the employee is permitted to sleep or engage in personal activities.
- Employee status depends on the economic realities of the relationship—not a contract, job title, or Form 1099 designation.
These Pennsylvania requirements are independently enforceable regardless of changes that may occur under federal law.
Recommended Compliance Steps
Home care employers should consider conducting a wage and hour audit at the direction of and with the assistance of counsel before receiving an investigative notice. The audit should include:
- Comparing payroll records against schedules, electronic visit-verification data, care notes, and client-service records.
- Reviewing pre-shift and post-shift documentation and communications.
- Confirming that all inter-client travel time is recorded and paid.
- Examining meal and sleep-time deductions for compliance with Pennsylvania law.
- Aggregating time worked across clients, programs, locations, and related entities.
- Recalculating overtime to confirm that all required compensation is included in the regular rate.
- Evaluating caregiver and registry classifications under the economic-realities test.
- Training supervisors and schedulers to prohibit off-the-clock work and inaccurate time reporting.
- Establishing a procedure for employees to report missed time or correct inaccurate records.
- Preserving relevant electronic and payroll records in a form that can be produced promptly during an investigation.
Employers also should review their retaliation policies. The Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act prohibits discharging or otherwise discriminating against an employee because the employee asserted wage rights, submitted a complaint, or participated in an investigation. Schedule reductions, undesirable reassignments, threats, or other adverse treatment following a wage complaint can create a separate retaliation claim even where the underlying pay dispute is contested.
The Bottom Line
Pennsylvania has moved from responding to individual home care wage complaints to actively looking for industry-wide violations. Agencies should expect investigators to examine what employees actually do, not simply what schedules, policies, or service authorizations say they should be doing.
Employers should identify and correct timekeeping, travel time, overtime, sleep time, and classification problems before an investigation. With proactive investigations already underway, this is an appropriate time for Pennsylvania home care providers to place wage and hour compliance near the top of their risk-management priorities.
For more information on this and other employment compliance issues, please contact Neva Stotler or Anna Truckley.
