Child labor laws are under attack in states across the country : Amid increasing child labor violations, lawmakers must act to strengthen standards

What this report finds: States across the country are attempting to weaken child labor protections, just as violations of these standards are rising. This report identifies bills weakening child labor standards in 10 states that have been introduced or passed in the past two years alone. It provides background on child labor standards and the coordinated push to weaken them, discusses the context in which these laws are being changed, and explains the connection between child labor and the United States’ broken immigration system. It also provides data showing that declines in labor force participation among young adults reflect decisions to obtain more education in order to increase their long-term employability and earnings, and that nearly all youth currently seeking work report being able to find it.

Why it matters: Federal laws providing minimum protections for child labor were enacted nearly a century ago, leading many to assume that children working in grueling and/or dangerous jobs was a thing of the past. In fact, violations of child labor laws are on the rise, as are attempts by state lawmakers to weaken the standards that protect children in the workplace.

What lawmakers can do about it: This report provides policy recommendations for lawmakers at both the federal and state levels. At the federal level, Congress should heed calls to increase penalties for child labor violations and address chronic underfunding of agencies that enforce labor standards, eliminate occupational carve-outs that allow for weaker standards in agricultural employment, pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, and implement immigration reforms that curb the exploitation of unauthorized immigrants and unaccompanied migrant youth. At the state level, lawmakers should eliminate subminimum wages for youth and raise the minimum wage, eliminate the two-tiered system that fails to protect children from hazardous or excessive work in agriculture, strengthen labor standards enforcement, and empower young people to build and strengthen unions.

A t a time when serious child labor violations are on the rise in hazardous meatpacking and manufacturing jobs, several state legislatures are weakening—or threatening to weaken—child labor protections. The trend reflects a coordinated multi-industry push to expand employer access to low-wage labor and weaken state child labor laws in ways that contradict federal protections, in pursuit of longer-term industry-backed goals to rewrite federal child labor laws and other worker protections for the whole country. Children of families in poverty, and especially Black, brown, and immigrant youth, stand to suffer the most harm from such changes.

Summary of findings

• Both violations of child labor laws and proposals to roll back child labor protections are on the rise across the country. The number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws increased 37% in the last year and at least 10 states introduced or passed laws rolling back child labor protections in the past two years.
• Attempts to weaken state-level child labor standards are part of a coordinated campaign backed by industry groups intent on eventually diluting federal standards that cover the whole country.
• Youth labor force participation declines over the past 20 years reflect that a steadily growing share of young people are choosing to complete high school and obtain additional education in order to increase their long-term employability and earnings. Putting off work in order to obtain more skills and education is a positive trend—for both individuals and the economy—not one that should be slowed or reversed.
• State and federal lawmakers must act to protect and advance the rights of workers of all ages and backgrounds while protecting poor and/or immigrant youth from exploitation. Policy recommendations include raising the minimum wage (and eliminating subminimum wages for youth), ending the two-tiered system of standards for agricultural and nonagricultural work, enforcing wage and hour laws, passing key immigration reforms, and supporting workers’ right to organize and form unions.

Across the country, both violations of child labor laws and proposals to roll back protections are on the rise

In February 2023 the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued new findings on an ongoing investigation of Packers Sanitation Services, Inc. (PSSI) for illegally employing over 100 children between the ages of 13 and 17 in hazardous occupations at 13 meatpacking facilities owned by JBS, Cargill, Tyson, and others (DOL 2023). These children worked illegally on overnight shifts cleaning razor-sharp saws and other high-risk equipment on slaughterhouse kill floors. At least three of them suffered injuries, including burns from caustic cleaning chemicals. The Department of Homeland Security has announced a parallel investigation into whether these young workers, many of whom may be unaccompanied migrant children, were connected to illegal employment by traffickers who profited from their labor (Strickler and Ainsley 2023).

Multiple factories in Hyundai-Kia’s supply chain in Alabama are also under DOL investigation for employing children as young as 14 (DOL 2022a). Many of these children are from Guatemalan migrant families. Like meatpacking plants across the Midwest, “many of the Alabama [auto] plants relied on staffing firms to recruit low-wage assembly line workers” (Schneyer, Rosenberg, and Cooke 2023).

Violations uncovered in recent federal enforcement actions are not isolated mistakes of ill-informed individual employers. PSSI, one of the country’s largest food sanitation services companies, is owned by the Blackstone Group, the world’s largest private equity firm (PESP 2022). DOL investigators found PSSI’s use of child labor to be “systemic” across eight states, “clearly [indicating] a corporate-wide failure.” DOL (2023) reports that “the adults—who had recruited, hired, and supervised these children—tried to derail our efforts to investigate their employment practices.”

Recent DOL cases and media reports make clear that unaccompanied migrant youth left in limbo by a broken U.S. immigration system have become particularly vulnerable to exploitation by employers and networks of labor brokers and staffing agencies who recruit workers on their behalf. Nearly 130,000 unaccompanied migrant children arrived at the U.S. border in 2022 alone, many fleeing poverty and violence (Dreier and Luce 2023). Many are eligible for asylum protection but have ended up among the 1.6 million people caught up in a record-high backlog of asylum claims awaiting processing or hearing dates, with claims taking years to adjudicate (TRAC 2022). In the meantime, many unaccompanied minors are sent to live with relatives or other sponsors. Both youth and adults awaiting asylum claims processing are ineligible for work permits for many months and cannot access social safety net programs (Workie, Hinkle, and Heredia 2022), leaving them impoverished and desperate to accept work of any kind to pay for necessities like food and rent, as well as repay debts to sponsors or help support family members in their countries of origin. Until federal agencies address the asylum backlog and the downstream issues it creates, young migrant children will continue to be a pool of potential workers whom employers may exploit, knowing they have no other viable options.

According to DOL, the number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws in fiscal year 2022 increased 37% over FY2021 and 283% over FY2015 (Figure A). The number of minors employed in violation of hazardous occupation orders increased 26% over FY2021 and 94% over FY2015 (DOL WHD 2022). In the six months prior to March 2023, DOL reported findings from 14 separate investigations into child labor violations. As of February 2023, it was investigating over 600 child labor cases (DOL OSEC 2023). These numbers represent just a tiny fraction of violations, most of which go unreported and uninvestigated.

Child labor violations are on the rise : Minors employed in violation of child labor laws and hazardous occupation orders, fiscal years 2015–2022

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The data underlying the figure.

Notes: Minors are workers less than 18 years old. Hazardous occupation orders ban minors from working in nonagricultural and agricultural occupations the Department of Labor defines as particularly hazardous for minors, or detrimental to their health or well-being.

Source: EPI analysis of Department of Labor (DOL) child labor violations data.

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The Biden administration recently announced plans to target additional enforcement toward companies illegally employing migrant youth in hazardous jobs (Rainey 2023). Proposed steps include the formation of a new interagency task force on the exploitation of child labor made up of representatives from DOL and the Department of Health and Human Services, the launching of a new DOL enforcement initiative, and an appeal to Congress to increase employer penalties for child labor law violations.

Industry groups are pushing state legislatures to weaken child labor protections

While federal agencies are ramping up enforcement of child labor protections in response to increasing violations (DOL 2022b), industry groups are working to roll back child labor protections via state legislation.

Already in 2023, seven bills to weaken child labor protections have been introduced in six Midwestern states (Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and South Dakota) and in Arkansas, where a bill repealing restrictions on work for 14- and 15-year-olds has now been signed into law. One bill introduced in Minnesota would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work on construction sites.1 Ten states have introduced, considered, or passed legislation rolling back protections for young workers in just the past two years (Table 1).

In the past two years, at least 10 states have introduced or passed laws rolling back child labor protections : State child labor legislation activity, 2021–2023

Source: EPI analysis of state legislative activity and news related to child labor legislation.

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Iowa’s proposed bill has generated national headlines for being particularly extreme (Sainato 2023). As introduced, the bill proposed lifting restrictions on hazardous work to allow children as young as 14 to work in meat coolers and industrial laundries, teens as young as 15 to work on assembly lines, and 16- and 17-year-olds to serve alcohol, among a long list of changes. The bill seeks to create special permits that would allow 14.5-year-olds to drive themselves up to 50 miles to and from work between 5:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. and state authorities to waive restrictions to allow teenagers 14–17 to perform various forms of hazardous work if approved as part of a “work-based learning program.”2 Other deeply disturbing proposals in the bill include removing rules that bar parents from making false statements (such as misreporting a child’s age) in order to procure employment that violates child labor law; eliminating the labor commissioner’s authority to require work permits for children in some occupations; granting new discretion for the state to waive, reduce, or delay civil penalties if an employer violates child labor laws; and providing employer immunity from legal claims arising from the injury, illness, or death of a child while engaged in a “work-based learning program.” Last year, Iowa enacted a law that allows 16- and 17-year-olds to care for school-age children in child care centers without supervision.3

In Arkansas, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has signed into law a 2023 bill repealing restrictions on work for 14- and 15-year-olds. Under the new law, children under 16 will no longer need to provide an employment certificate from the Division of Labor that verif ies proof of their age and parental consent to work. 4 A spokesperson for Sanders called parental permission requirements for children to work an “arbitrary burden” (Picchi 2023). Removing requirements to provide proof of age or permission to work can, however, easily facilitate the exploitation of migrant youth while giving cover to adults who connect them with illegal employment.

And, in Ohio, Republican lawmakers in the Senate passed a bill proposing that 14- and 15-year-olds be able to work until 9:00 p.m. during the school year.5 The Ohio Restaurant Association, the National Federation of Independent Business, and the Pickerington Area Chamber of Commerce testified in support of the bill (Buchanan 2023). The bill was first introduced in 2021, when it passed the Ohio Senate but was not put to a vote in the House.6

In the past two years, several states have proposed or enacted laws extending the hours 14- and 15-year-olds can work. Both New Jersey and New Hampshire passed such laws in 2022. The New Hampshire law lowered the age for minors to bus tables where alcohol is served from 15 to 14, increased the number of hours per week 16- and 17-year-olds can work, and repealed a provision that limited the number of night shifts these teens can work per week.7 The New Jersey law increased the number of hours teens can work during the summer months to 40 a week for 14- and 15-year-olds and 50 (more than full time) for 16- and 17-year-olds. It also increased the number of hours minors can work before a break from five to six.8 In Wisconsin, a 2021 bill to extend work hours for minors was passed by both chambers of the legislature before being vetoed by Governor Evers in 2022.9

Across the country, the primary proponents of these laws are business groups and their state affiliates, particularly the National Federation of Independent Business, the Chamber of Commerce, and the National Restaurant Association (Lazare 2022). Hotel, lodging, and tourism associations, grocery industry associations, home builders, and Americans for Prosperity—a billionaire-funded right-wing dark money group—have also supported bills in various states (see Table 2).

In Nebraska, lawmakers have introduced a bill to pay two groups of young workers below the state’s current minimum wage.10 In 2022, Nebraska voters approved a ballot measure to increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2026, starting with an increase from $9 to $10.50 in January 2023 (Mast, Woods, and Sherer 2022). In direct opposition to this change, the bill proposes that 14- to 17-year-olds be paid only $9, with a gradual increase to $10 by 2026. The bill also proposes paying “training wages” to 18- and 19-year-olds of $9.25 an hour, increasing to $10 by 2026 and then remaining at 75% of the minimum wage thereafter. In defense of his proposal to pay young workers a subminimum wage, State Senator Tom Briese (R-Albion) stated that “we shouldn’t be making it harder for employers to hire young folks” (Stoddard 2023).

Enforcing labor standards that mandate fair and efficient wages do not “make it hard to hire young folks” or anyone else. A minimum wage that was too high and hence constraining job growth would suppress employer demand for workers while boosting their supply. The growing gap between reduced demand and increased supply would show up as an increase in unemployment rates for the affected group. Yet the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds currently sits at a rate (8.0%) that matches pre-COVID lows of 2019, when the unemployment rate for young workers was lower than it had been since the 1950s (BLS CPS 2023). Employers seem uncomfortable with the reality that they must pay higher wages to attract workers in a tight labor market—yet this is exactly the way markets are supposed to work.

Weakened state child labor protections contradict federal standards—and they’re intended to

Newly weakened state laws fly in the face of decades of research documenting that excessive work hours can jeopardize teens’ health and development (Monahan, Lee, and Steinberg 2011) and that youth are developmentally and biologically more vulnerable to workplace injuries (NIOSH 2022) and long-term harms from chemical exposures and other workplace hazards (Graczyk and Riediker 2019) than older adults. They also jeopardize the futures of young people, as young adults who drop out of school to work have the lowest earnings and highest unemployment rates of all workers (BLS 2022a).

Many proposed changes to state child labor laws also directly contradict federal standards designed to protect youth from well-documented dangers. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) sets a floor on wages, hours, and child labor standards; state laws can provide more protection than federal statutes mandate, but they cannot provide less. Where state standards are weaker than those provided in FLSA, federal law preempts the state standard.

Federal law includes a youth subminimum “training” wage for teens at the start of jobs and a two-tiered system of far weaker protections for youth working in agriculture. These substandard wages and protections in agriculture especially disadvantage low-income and migrant youth who are compelled to work by economic desperation (Table 2).

Federal law sets minimum standards for child labor in agricultural and nonagricultural employment

12 with parental consent

“Youth” minimum: $4.25 per hour for employees under 20 years of age during their first 90 consecutive calendar days of employment

Source: EPI summary of U.S. Department of Labor Child Labor Bulletins No. 101 and No. 102.

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Generally, workers are covered by the FLSA if their work engages them in interstate commerce or if they work for a private business with annual sales of at least $500,000 or a hospital, health care facility, school, or public entity (DOL WHD 2009). Weaker state standards on work hours, wages, or protections from hazardous work thus legally apply only to the small subset of employment situations not covered by the FLSA.

Sixteen states already have weaker standards on youth work hours than those in the FLSA. They permit youth working for non-FLSA-covered employers to start work earlier, end work later, and work additional hours per day or week (DOL WHD 2023). Many state legislators seeking to remove prohibitions on hazardous forms of work or allow youth to work extended hours have been clear that they understand that these weaker standards would conflict with FLSA rules (remaining applicable only in non-FLSA-covered employment contexts)—and that such conflict is part of the point. Industry lobbyists backing state child labor law changes appear to view state-by-state erosion of protections as a way to build pressure for eventual relaxation or elimination of federal wage and hour standards for the whole country, legalizing forms of child labor long considered to be hazardous or exploitative and expanding the pool of low-wage labor available to employers in industries ranging from restaurants and retail to construction, logistics, and manufacturing.

Lawmakers in Ohio, for example, accompanied their 2022 proposal to extend hours for youth work covered under state law with concurrent resolutions calling on Congress to “change [the] Fair Labor Standards Act re: minors,” bringing federal standards in line with the looser rules proposed for Ohio.11 Last year, South Dakota’s lone member of Congress, Dusty Johnson, introduced a bill to lift limits on work hours for teens 14 and 15.12 The bill would extend work hours to 9:00 p.m. and increase the number of workable hours to 24 per school week for young workers nationwide. The South Dakota Retailers Association, the National Restaurant Association, and the National Fireworks Association supported the bill (Johnson 2022).

Creating additional discrepancies between state and federal labor standards (which already involve a complex patchwork of rules and coverage guidelines within and across states) also makes it more difficult for workers to understand their rights and for employers to understand their legal obligations, increasing the likelihood that some employers will inadvertently violate federal prohibitions against employment of minors by following state guidelines that are inconsistent with FLSA requirements.

Declines in youth labor force participation reflect the growing importance of education for career success

Industry lobbyists backing changes to child labor law have recently cited the 56% labor force participation rate among 16- to 24-year-olds as “awful low” (Bogage 2023). Let’s pretend for a moment that these lobbyists are truly concerned with the career trajectories of young people, and not merely the inconvenience that higher-wage jobs pose for the interests they represent. Referring to a 56% labor force participation rate among young people as “low” ignores macroeconomic trends, demographic changes in the workforce, and rational choices made by youth and their families about when and how much teens and young adults can or should work as opposed to attending school or engaging in other activities that support learning and development. It also begs the question: Do we really want most children and young adults working in the labor market most of the time, or do we want them to make long-run investments in education and training?

The labor force participation rate among people 16–24 has largely recovered to 2019 rates, following the COVID-19 pandemic recession, outpacing the recovery of overall labor force participation (Figure B). Declines over the last two decades reflect the fact that a larger share of young adults are in school today.

Labor force participation among young adults has recovered to pre-pandemic levels : Labor force participation rate among adults age 16+ and among young adults ages 16–24, 2000–2022