Child Labor Laws: An Employer Guide to Hiring Minors
Federal and state child labor laws for employers: age limits, hour rules, prohibited jobs, work permits, records to keep, and what violations cost.
Most employers who violate child labor law are not trying to, but the penalty attaches to the fact, not the intent. They hire a sixteen year old for the summer and put them on the meat slicer, put a fourteen year old on the schedule after seven in the evening in October, or let a seventeen year old take the delivery van because it is Tuesday and somebody has to.
This guide covers the federal framework by age bracket, the hour rules in detail, the jobs that are off limits, how state law overrides federal, what you have to keep on file, and what violations actually cost. It is written for the owner or office manager who is personally responsible for compliance without a legal department behind them. I build the scheduling records and employee files this depends on at FirstHR.
What makes this area genuinely difficult is not the law itself, which is short and knowable. The rules sit at two levels, federal and state, that interact in a specific way. The tightest restrictions turn on facts about a school district you do not control. And the numbers change depending on whether the minor is fourteen or sixteen, whether school is in session, and what month it is.
One caveat before the detail: this is general information, not legal advice. Child labor rules change frequently at both levels, so verify current requirements before you act.
What Are Child Labor Laws?
Child labor laws are the federal and state rules that set a minimum working age, limit the hours and times of day minors may work, and prohibit them from specific dangerous occupations. The federal layer comes from the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and is enforced by the Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division. Every state has its own layer on top.
The stated purpose of the rules explains their shape: they exist to stop work from interfering with education and to keep young workers out of jobs likely to hurt them. That is why the tightest restrictions apply during the school year, why they key off school hours rather than business hours, and why the prohibited occupation list is about machinery and heights rather than difficulty.
Which Employers Are Covered
Assume you are covered. The exceptions are narrower than they sound, and the most common way a small employer gets this wrong is by concluding that a revenue threshold lets them out.
Federal child labor provisions reach enterprises with an annual gross volume of sales made or business done of at least $500,000. They also reach individual employees engaged in interstate commerce or handling, selling, or otherwise working on goods that have moved in interstate commerce.
That second test is the one that catches small employers. It covers a very large share of businesses below the revenue line: handling credit card transactions, ordering supplies from out of state, or shipping anything across a state border can be enough.
Then there is the state layer, which frequently has no revenue threshold at all and applies to any employer with employees. So the practical answer for a small business is that federal coverage is likely and state coverage is near certain. If you are hiring for a small business and considering a teenager for the summer, assume the rules reach you.
The Rules by Age Bracket
Federal child labor law sorts workers into four age brackets, and almost every practical question comes down to knowing which bracket someone is in.
The bracket that trips employers up is 16 and 17, and not because its rules are strict. It is because there are no federal hour limits at all, which people read as no limits, and then their state turns out to prohibit work past 10 p.m. on a school night.
Federal silence is not permission. It just means the question is answered somewhere else, which is why how many hours a 16 year old can work has a different answer in every state.
The minimum age also applies to the work, not to the payroll status. Classifying a young worker as an independent contractor does not move them out of these rules, and misclassification adds a second violation on top of the first.
The Hour Rules You Have to Get Right
For federal non-agricultural work, 14 and 15 year olds may work no more than 3 hours on a school day, 18 hours in a school week, 8 hours on a non-school day, and 40 hours in a non-school week. They may work only outside school hours, and only between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., extended to 9 p.m. from June 1 through Labor Day. Workers 16 and older have no federal hour restrictions.
| Limit | School in session | School not in session |
|---|---|---|
| Maximum hours per day | 3 hours, including Friday | 8 hours |
| Maximum hours per week | 18 hours | 40 hours |
| Earliest start | 7:00 a.m. | 7:00 a.m. |
| Latest finish | 7:00 p.m. | 7:00 p.m., or 9:00 p.m. from June 1 through Labor Day |
| Work during school hours | Not permitted | Not applicable |
Two details in that table do more damage than the numbers themselves.
The first is that a school day includes Friday. The three-hour cap applies to Friday afternoon exactly as it applies to Tuesday, and a Friday evening shift in a restaurant is an easy way for a compliant schedule to become a violation.
The second is what counts as a school day in the first place, and your own district's calendar does not decide it.
There is a limited exception worth knowing: 14 and 15 year olds enrolled in an approved Work Experience and Career Exploration Program may work up to 23 hours in a school week and 3 hours on school days, including during school hours. That is a formal program with an official authorization, not something you arrange with a parent.
Leave that program aside and the hour rules become a scheduling problem rather than a legal one. You are not going to get caught for not knowing the law. You are going to get caught because a manager filled a gap on a Friday and nothing in your process stopped it.
Nick Anisimov, FirstHR founder
Jobs Minors Cannot Do
The Secretary of Labor has issued 17 hazardous occupations orders, and the Department of Labor publishes the plain-language list of the jobs that are off limits to anyone under 18. The orders apply regardless of hours, regardless of parental permission, and regardless of how capable the individual is.
Beyond that list, workers aged 14 and 15 operate under a much stricter rule: their permitted jobs are listed one by one, and anything not on the list is prohibited. The allowed list includes retail work such as cashiering and shelving, office and clerical work, most food service and kitchen work short of cooking, bagging and carrying out, and clean-up work using vacuums.
The kitchen is where the line gets crossed. Per Department of Labor Fact Sheet 2A, 14 and 15 year olds may do limited cooking on electric or gas grills that do not involve an open flame and may use a deep fryer that automatically lowers and raises the basket. They may perform no baking at all.
Power-driven machines are a separate line, and a harder one. A 14 or 15 year old may not operate, clean, set up, adjust, repair, or oil a food slicer, grinder, processor, or mixer. Hazardous occupation order 10 goes further and bars anyone under 18 from power-driven meat processing machines, even when the machine is cutting cheese rather than meat.
The Department of Labor Fact Sheet 43 is the definitive short reference on all of this and is worth reading in full before you hire anyone under 16. It is a few pages long and it summarizes the same regulations an investigator applies.
State Law and the Stricter-Standard Rule
The governing principle is simple and it has no exceptions: where federal and state child labor standards differ, the more protective standard applies. You do not get to pick, and following federal law is not a defense against a state violation.
A great deal varies by state: minimum ages for particular jobs, hour and nightwork limits for 16 and 17 year olds where federal law is silent, meal and rest break requirements specific to minors, permit and certificate requirements, and prohibited occupations beyond the federal list. The Department of Labor state pages are the starting point, but the state labor agency itself is the authority.
| What differs by state | Why it matters | Where federal law is silent |
|---|---|---|
| Nightwork limits for 16 and 17 year olds | Federal law imposes none, so the state rule is the only rule | Yes, entirely |
| Daily and weekly hour caps for 16 and 17 year olds | Many states cap hours on school nights | Yes, entirely |
| Work permits and age certificates | Most states require one before the first shift | Yes, no federal permit exists |
| Meal and rest breaks for minors | Several states require breaks for minors that they do not require for adults | Yes, federal law requires no breaks |
| Additional prohibited occupations | States can and do add to the federal hazardous list | No, but state adds on top |
| Penalty amounts | State penalties stack on federal ones and several states have raised theirs | No, both apply |
The column that matters most is the third one. The two questions employers most often ask about older teens are how late they can work and how many hours. Federal law says nothing on either, so the answer is entirely a state question, and no national article can answer it for you.
If you employ minors in more than one state, treat each state separately. This is the same discipline that HR compliance requires everywhere else. Tracking every state on its own takes work, which is why a single company-wide policy set to the strictest state is often cheaper than maintaining several.
Work Permits and Age Certificates
There is no federal work permit. Most states require one, under names including employment certificate, work permit, work certificate, and age certificate, and the mechanics differ enough to trip up employers who have hired minors elsewhere.
The Department of Labor's state age certification table shows a mandatory employment certificate in most of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wyoming issue neither an employment certificate nor an age certificate, which leaves the whole burden of proving age with the employer.
A middle group sits between those two. Florida, Montana, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah issue no employment certificate at all, but each will issue an age certificate on request, which is worth having even where nothing compels it. Montana makes the age certificate mandatory only for workers 16 and older in hazardous occupations.
Who issues the permit varies as well. In some states the school issues it and the student initiates it. In others the state labor department issues it. A handful of states have moved to online registration systems that the employer must use directly.
In several states the employer has to sign a statement of intent to employ before the permit can be issued at all. That puts your paperwork on the critical path, and a start date can slip because of it.
The name on the form tells you almost nothing about how demanding it is. Missouri calls its version a work certificate, issues it for 14 and 15 year olds through an authorized school representative, and uses separate forms for the school year and for the summer.
The Missouri school representative may also decline or revoke the certificate where the job would not serve the best interests of the child. That makes the school a gatekeeper rather than a rubber stamp in the states that route permits through it.
Where no permit is required, the burden shifts entirely to you to establish and document age. That happens through ordinary hiring paperwork, and the identity documents collected during I-9 verification will usually establish it. Note the sequencing: you need age established before the first shift, not before the first paycheck.
Fold the permit step into your standard new hire paperwork rather than treating it as a special case. Employers who handle it ad hoc are the ones who discover on a Monday that the certificate takes a week.
Work Permits for Minors, State by State
Work permits for minors are a state requirement and never a federal one, so the only useful version of the question is which state you are hiring in. Who issues the document, what has to be true before the first shift, and what you do with it afterward all change at the state line.
Federal certificates of age sit alongside the state system as a narrow parallel. Under 29 CFR 570.121, state employment or age certificates are accepted as proof of age in 45 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. In Idaho, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas, federal certificates of age are accepted.
South Carolina and Texas therefore appear on both lists, and the two do not conflict. Each state will issue its own age certificate on request. For the federal rules, though, the regulation names the federal certificate of age as the accepted proof in both states, and an unexpired one on file that shows the minor old enough for the job is what protects the employer under federal law.
The employer is almost never the issuer. In most permit states the document comes from the school system. In California, for example, the permit to employ and work is issued by the minor's school, or in summer by the superintendent of the district where the minor lives.
New Jersey is the counter-example. It moved working papers onto a state labor department system on June 1, 2023, and took schools out of the process altogether.
New York is making the same move, effective May 9, 2027. Under Labor Law section 135, working papers for workers aged 14 to 17 are issued electronically by the state Department of Labor through a statewide database, and the minor must update that registration for each new employer. Until May 9, 2027, school officials still issue New York working papers under the Education Law, and the employer returns the certificate to the minor when the employment ends.
| State | Permit before the first shift | Who issues it | What the employer does |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | Yes, ages 14 to 17 | School officials until May 9, 2027; from that date, the state Department of Labor, electronically | Until May 9, 2027, keep the certificate on file at the workplace and return it to the minor when the job ends; from that date, keep it readily accessible, and electronic access through the state database counts |
| California | Yes | The minor’s school, or in summer the superintendent of the district where the minor lives | Hold a valid permit before any work begins, keep it on file, produce it on inspection |
| Pennsylvania | Yes | School district issuing officer | Notify the issuing officer within five days of the first day and the last day |
| New Jersey | Yes, under 18 | State labor department, through its online system | Register first, give the minor the employer code, then complete the employer section |
| Texas | No | No permit; the minor may apply to the state for a certificate of age | Establish and document age through ordinary hiring records |
| Florida | No | No work permit; a district school board may issue an age certificate | Obtain proof of age before the first shift and keep it on record all through employment |
Even where you do not issue the permit, the application cannot move without you. New Jersey requires the employer to register in the state system and hand the minor an eight-digit employer code before the application can be submitted at all, then to complete the employer portion when the system emails for it.
Pennsylvania puts a deadline on the same idea. Under the Child Labor Act, the employer notifies the issuing officer in writing within five days of the first day of work, giving the normal duties and hours along with the minor's age and permit number, and again within five days of the final day.
Once the permit is issued, it becomes a record you have to be able to produce. New York Education Law section 3216, as amended effective May 9, 2027, requires the employment certificate to be kept on file at the place of the minor's employment or be readily accessible to anyone authorized by law to examine it. The version in force until then requires the certificate to be kept on file at the place of employment and returned to the minor when the employment terminates.
California puts the same duty in its Education Code. Section 49161 requires employers to keep every permit on file during the term of employment, and section 49164 keeps those permits open at all times to inspection by supervisors of attendance, probation officers, designees of the Labor Commissioner, and officers of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.
In the states with no permit, the duty changes shape rather than disappearing. Texas requires no permit at all. Under Texas Labor Code section 51.022, it is the child, from age 14, who applies to the Texas Workforce Commission for a certificate of age, so the document exists only if the minor asks for it.
Florida requires no working papers either. Section 450.045 of the Florida Statutes still requires an employer to first obtain proof of the child's age and keep it on record for the entire period of employment, satisfied by a birth certificate, driver license, school-issued age certificate, or passport.
Be clear about what a permit does not do. It answers a single question, whether this person may be employed at all, and it authorizes nothing beyond that. It does not add an hour to the daily cap, open a hazardous occupation, or travel with the minor into duties their age bars.
Hiring minors legally means clearing three separate gates: the permit where the state requires one, the hour limits, and the prohibited occupations list. A valid permit in the file is no answer to a Friday evening scheduling violation.
Kelly KapoorCustomer ServiceUp to Date
Darryl PhilbinWarehouseNeeds Attention
Ryan HowardSalesUp to DatePay Rules for Minors
Minors are entitled to the applicable minimum wage and to overtime on the same terms as any other non-exempt employee. There is no general discount for being young.
There is one narrow exception. Federal law permits a youth minimum wage of $4.25 per hour for employees under 20 during their first 90 consecutive calendar days of employment with an employer.
The conditions are strict. The clock runs on 90 consecutive calendar days rather than 90 worked days, the rate ends the moment the employee turns 20 if that comes first, and an employer may not displace other employees in order to use it. Many states set a higher floor that eliminates the option entirely.
Everything else follows ordinary wage and hour rules. If a state requires meal or rest breaks for minors specifically, those come on top of your other obligations rather than replacing any of them, and unpaid break time still has to be recorded accurately.
What You Must Keep on File
Record keeping is where a defensible position is built or lost, and it is the part employers do most casually. An investigation does not ask what your policy was. It asks what your records show.
The second item on that list separates compliant employers from exposed ones. A total hours figure cannot demonstrate compliance with a rule that restricts times of day: a payroll export showing eighteen hours for the week proves nothing about whether any of them fell after 7 p.m. Your timesheet needs start and stop times per day, and it needs to be kept.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Employee name | Date of birth | Age bracket | School district of residence | Permit required in this state | Permit or age certificate on file | Date obtained | Approved job duties | Hire date |
| 2 | Example: A. Rivera | 2011-04-18 | 14 to 15 | Lincoln USD | Yes | Yes | 2026-06-02 | Cashiering, shelving, bagging, dining room clean-up | 2026-06-05 |
| 3 | |||||||||
| 4 | |||||||||
| 5 | |||||||||
| 6 | |||||||||
| 7 |
The tracker has three sheets because three separate things go wrong. The first sheet records who is a minor, what proves it, and what duties were approved.
The second sheet is the hours log, with start and stop times rather than totals. Its weekly cap follows the school week, not the individual day. A Saturday during the school year gets the eight-hour daily allowance because Saturday is not a school day, but its hours still have to fit inside the eighteen-hour school week.
The third sheet is the one nobody builds: the four dates that change what is legal while your schedule stays exactly the same.
Keep these records alongside the rest of the personnel file and apply your normal retention schedule, checking whether your state sets a longer period for minor employment records specifically. Several do.
Before You Hire a Minor
The sequence below is short and it takes an hour the first time. After that it is a template.
Step seven is the cheapest insurance on the page, because three of those four dates are known the day you hire.
What Violations Actually Cost
Federal civil money penalties for child labor violations are set by regulation and normally adjusted for inflation each year, though the Department of Labor skipped the 2026 adjustment, so the 2025 amounts still apply. Per 29 CFR 579.1, the current maximum is up to $16,035 for each employee who was the subject of a child labor violation.
A second, higher band covers the worst outcomes. Where the violation causes the death or serious injury of an employee under 18, the maximum is $72,876. Only that higher band can double, to $145,752, where the violation is repeated or willful.
The structure matters more than the headline number. The penalty attaches per affected employee, which means a single scheduling practice applied across four minors is not one exposure, it is four. Spread the same practice across a bigger summer crew and that is how a modest restaurant ends up with a six-figure assessment for hours violations that nobody thought were serious.
State penalties apply in addition to federal ones, and several states have increased theirs substantially. Both levels can assess for the same underlying conduct, and neither reduces the other.
Some costs never appear in a penalty table. The investigation itself consumes weeks of somebody's time, and findings against a business are frequently published by name in a press release. A repeat finding also puts you in repeated-or-willful territory, where the maximum for a violation that causes death or serious injury doubles.
Where Small Employers Get Caught
The violations that actually happen at small companies are boringly consistent.
Summer hours running into the school year is first. The rules change on two dates: Labor Day, when the evening extension ends, and the day the local district resumes classes, when the school-day hour caps return. The schedule usually does not change with them. Any business that leans on seasonal employment should treat those two dates as hard deadlines.
Friday is second. The three-hour school-day cap includes Friday, and Friday evening is exactly when a restaurant or retail location most wants an extra pair of hands.
Equipment is third, and it is the most likely to produce a serious finding rather than a technical one. A 15 year old operating a slicer, a 17 year old on a forklift or a compactor, anyone under 18 sent up to clear a gutter. These are hazardous occupation violations, and if one ends in death or serious injury, the higher penalty band applies.
Driving is fourth and is widely misunderstood. Occasional incidental driving by a 17 year old is permitted only under tightly defined conditions. Driving as a regular part of the job is not, and neither is any on-the-job driving on public roads by a 16 year old.
Then there are the quieter ones. Relying on what a parent said about the age. Recording total hours without start and stop times, which leaves you unable to prove compliance even when you complied. Assuming a revenue threshold exempts you. Treating a minor as a contractor.
The last quiet mistake is the mechanism behind almost everything above: nobody tells the manager who assigns shifts the four numbers that matter. Those are the daily cap, the weekly cap, the earliest start, and the latest finish.
None of this requires a compliance department to solve. It requires the birthdate to be visible where the schedule gets built, the permitted-duty list to be written down once, and four dates in a calendar. That is the whole system.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the minimum age to work in the US?
Fourteen, for most jobs outside agriculture. That is the federal floor under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and a child younger than 14 can do non-farm work only in a few named situations: delivering newspapers to consumers, acting or performing, gathering evergreens and making wreaths as a homeworker, doing minor chores around private homes, and casual babysitting. The other opening is a business the child’s parents own outright, as long as the work is not in manufacturing, not in mining, and not in a hazardous occupation. Farm work follows separate, looser rules that allow younger workers in some circumstances. Several states set a higher minimum age or attach extra conditions, so confirm your state’s rule before you treat 14 as the answer.
How many hours can a 14 or 15 year old work?
Under federal law it depends on the school calendar. On a school day, Friday included, a 14 or 15 year old may work up to 3 hours, and no more than 18 hours across a school week. On a day without school the cap is 8 hours, and in a week without school it is 40. Work may never take place during school hours, and it must fall between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., with the evening limit pushed to 9 p.m. from June 1 through Labor Day. The calendar that counts belongs to the local public school district where the minor lives while employed, not the district your business is in. Many states set tighter limits than these.
How many hours can a 16 or 17 year old work?
Federal law sets no cap at all for this age group: no daily or weekly maximum and no restriction on the time of day. Most employers find that surprising. It does not mean anything goes, because many states limit nightwork and daily or weekly hours for 16 and 17 year olds, especially on school nights. What federal law does restrict is the kind of work. Anyone in this bracket is barred from the jobs on the Secretary of Labor’s hazardous occupations list, which covers most power-driven machinery, roofing, excavation, and driving as a regular part of the job. Before you build a schedule for an older teen, check your state rules for the hour limits that actually apply.
What jobs can minors not do?
Nobody under 18 may work in the federal hazardous occupations. That list covers operating most power-driven machinery, meat processing equipment, and hoisting gear such as forklifts; roofing work; excavation, wrecking, and demolition; logging and sawmill work; mining; work with explosives or radioactive substances; and driving a motor vehicle as a regular job duty. Parental permission and the teen’s ability change none of this. For 14 and 15 year olds the rule is tighter still, because their permitted jobs are listed and every job missing from that list is off limits. In practice that means no cooking beyond limited duties, no baking, and almost no operation of power equipment.
Do I need a work permit to hire a minor?
It depends on the state, because federal law has no work permit requirement. Most states do want a document in place before a minor starts, and they call it by different names: employment certificate, work permit, or age certificate. Only a small group issue nothing at all; Arizona, Idaho, and Tennessee are among them. Where a document exists, the process changes from state to state. Some states route it through the school and others through the labor department, and several will not issue it until the employer signs a statement of intent to employ, a written confirmation that it plans to hire the minor. Even where it is optional, a state-issued age certificate is worth getting, because it shields you from an age-based violation if the age it records turns out to be wrong.
What is the penalty for violating child labor laws?
Federal civil money penalties top out at $16,035 for each minor involved in a child labor violation. When a violation causes the death or serious injury of a minor, the ceiling rises to $72,876, and that amount may be doubled if the violation is repeated or willful. These limits come from Department of Labor regulations and are normally adjusted for inflation every year, but the Department skipped the 2026 adjustment, which leaves the 2025 amounts in force. Because every affected minor counts separately, one scheduling mistake repeated across several teenagers adds up fast. State penalties come on top of the federal ones, and several states have raised their own penalties substantially.
Do child labor laws apply to small businesses?
Almost always, yes. The child labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act cover any enterprise with at least $500,000 in annual sales volume, but revenue is only one of two ways in. The law also reaches individual workers whose jobs involve interstate commerce, including handling goods that have crossed a state line, and that pulls in a very large share of small businesses no matter what they earn. On top of the federal law, every state enforces its own child labor rules on its own terms, and those rules often have no revenue test at all. Concluding that you are too small to be covered is one of the more expensive assumptions you can make.
Can a minor work in a family business?
Yes, within limits, and the exemption is narrower than most owners believe. A child under 16 may work in a business the child’s parents own outright, provided the job is not in manufacturing or mining and is not an occupation declared hazardous. Full parental ownership is the part to check carefully. According to the Wage and Hour Division field handbook, a partnership or corporation counts only when the parents are its only partners or sole owners, so any outside owner takes the business out of the exemption. For 16 and 17 year olds, the hazardous occupations orders apply even in a parent-owned business. Your state may add conditions of its own, whoever owns the company.
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