Federal Child Labor Laws: Ages, Hours, and Hazardous Jobs

Federal child labor laws, set by the Fair Labor Standards Act, establish 14 as the minimum age for most non-farm jobs, place tight limits on the hours and types of work available to 14- and 15-year-olds, bar anyone under 18 from hazardous occupations, and treat agricultural work under a separate and more permissive set of rules. The Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor enforces these standards, and employers who violate them can be fined more than $16,000 per minor.¹

Minimum Working Age Under Federal Law

The baseline is straightforward: you must be at least 14 to hold a non-agricultural job.² Federal rules then layer protections by age.

At 14 and 15, work is limited to non-manufacturing, non-mining, non-hazardous positions, and hours are capped.
At 16, a minor can work in any occupation the Secretary of Labor has not declared hazardous, and federal law no longer restricts how many hours they work or what time of day they work them.²
At 18, all federal child labor restrictions drop away, including the hazardous-occupation ban.

A detail many people miss: the federal hour caps vanish at 16. A state may still impose limits, but the FLSA does not.

Hours and Time-of-Day Limits for 14- and 15-Year-Olds

The strictest scheduling rules target 14- and 15-year-old workers. During weeks when school is in session, these minors cannot work more than 3 hours on a school day or more than 18 hours total for the week.³

When school is out — summer break, holidays, weekends — the caps loosen. A 14- or 15-year-old can work up to 8 hours per day and 40 hours per week during non-school weeks.³

Time-of-day rules apply year-round. Work must fall between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. for most of the year. From June 1 through Labor Day, the evening cutoff extends to 9:00 p.m.² There are no exceptions, no matter how willing an employer or parent might be.

Jobs Allowed and Prohibited for 14- and 15-Year-Olds

Federal law also controls what young teens do on the clock. Permitted work for 14- and 15-year-olds includes office and retail tasks like cashiering, filing, pricing and tagging goods, shelving, and bagging; food-service tasks like kitchen prep, cleaning fruits and vegetables, serving, and limited cooking on electric or gas grills without open flames; pumping gas and hand washing vehicles; delivery by foot, bicycle, or public transportation; lifeguarding at traditional swimming pools or water parks at age 15 with proper certification; and creative or intellectual work.⁴

The prohibited list is just as specific. Workers at 14 and 15 cannot use ladders or scaffolds at any height. They cannot work in manufacturing, mining, processing, freezers, or meat coolers.² They cannot operate power-driven food slicers, grinders, or mixers.

Cooking and baking restrictions trip up many food-service employers. A 14- or 15-year-old can cook on a flat grill without open flame or use an auto-lift deep fryer, but that is the extent of it. They cannot bake anything, including assembling ingredients or removing items from an oven, and they cannot use rotisseries, pressure cookers, or broilers.⁵ The blanket ban on baking catches people off guard because it includes every step of the process.

Door-to-door sales carry their own age floor: you must be at least 16 to work as a youth peddler under federal law, whether selling at customers’ homes, on street corners, or at transit stations.⁶ Volunteer fundraising, such as selling Girl Scout cookies or collecting for a school, is not covered by this restriction.

Hazardous Occupations Off-Limits Under 18

Even with the freedom that comes at 16, the law draws a hard line around dangerous work. The Department of Labor has issued 17 Hazardous Occupations Orders that ban anyone under 18 from specific categories of employment, whether or not the minor is enrolled in school.⁷

Prohibited categories include:

All work in or around coal mines and other mining operations
Any work in a room where radioactive substances are stored or present in the air
Power-driven equipment such as woodworking and metal-forming machines, meat slicers, grinders, balers, and circular or band saws
Hoisting equipment including elevators, cranes, derricks, and forklifts
All work on or about a roof, and trenching or backfilling operations
Demolition and wrecking
Driving and outside-helper work on motor vehicles, with limited exceptions for 17-year-olds

Employers are responsible for verifying every worker’s age and keeping anyone under 18 out of these roles. Ignorance is not a defense; the violation attaches to the employer whether they checked or not.

Farm Work Follows Different Rules

Agricultural employment operates under significantly lower age thresholds than non-farm work.⁸

A child of any age can work on a farm owned or operated by their parents, in any job, at any time, including hazardous tasks.
At 10 and 11, an employer with a special waiver from the Secretary of Labor can hire the child to hand-harvest short-season crops outside school hours, for no more than 8 weeks between June 1 and October 15.
At 12 and 13, work is allowed outside school hours in non-hazardous farm jobs, either on a farm that also employs the parent or with written parental consent.
At 14 and 15, any non-hazardous farm job outside school hours is permitted.
At 16 and up, all restrictions disappear, including the ban on hazardous farm work.

Agriculture has its own hazardous occupations orders for workers under 16, covering large tractors, certain animals such as breeding bulls or sows with piglets, toxic pesticides, blasting agents, and work from heights above 20 feet.⁹ The parental exemption overrides even these orders when the child works on a farm the parent owns or operates.

Youth Minimum Wage

Federal law allows employers to pay workers under 20 a reduced minimum wage of $4.25 per hour during their first 90 consecutive calendar days on the job.¹⁰ Those 90 days count by the calendar, not by shifts worked, so a teen who works two days a week still hits the 90-day mark roughly three months after their start date. Once the period ends, or the employee turns 20, whichever comes first, the employer must pay at least the standard federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

Employers cannot fire or cut the hours of an existing worker in order to hire a younger employee at the $4.25 rate.¹⁰ Many states set their own minimum wage above the federal floor, and some do not allow the youth subminimum rate at all, so the actual pay a minor receives depends on where they work.

State Laws Can Be Stricter

Federal child labor rules are a floor, not a ceiling. When a state law imposes a stricter standard, a higher minimum working age, shorter hours, or more occupational restrictions, the stricter law applies.² Many states set the minimum work age at 16 for certain industries, cap hours for 16- and 17-year-olds where federal law sets no cap, or require breaks federal law does not mandate.

Work permits are a common point of confusion. Federal law does not require minors to obtain a work permit or working papers.² Many states do, however, and the process and fees vary widely. Check your state’s requirements rather than assuming the federal rules are all that apply.

Penalties for Employers Who Violate the Rules

The Wage and Hour Division investigates child labor violations through workplace inspections and employee complaints. The financial consequences are substantial and are adjusted upward for inflation each year.

Standard violations: up to $16,035 per minor employed illegally¹
Violations causing serious injury or death: up to $72,876 per violation
Willful or repeated violations causing serious injury or death: up to $145,752

These figures reflect amounts effective as of January 2025. Beyond civil fines, willful violators face criminal prosecution with fines of up to $10,000, up to six months in prison, or both; imprisonment requires a second criminal conviction.¹¹

The law also includes a “hot goods” provision. Employers are prohibited from shipping goods produced in any facility where child labor violations occurred within the preceding 30 days.¹² For manufacturers, this can freeze entire product lines. The Department of Labor can also seek court injunctions to halt ongoing violations immediately.

Employers must record the date of birth for every employee under 19 and keep payroll records for at least three years; time cards, work schedules, and wage-computation records must be retained for at least two years.¹³ Gaps in documentation do not help an employer during a compliance audit.

Whistleblower Protection

Workers who report child labor violations are protected from retaliation under the FLSA. An employer cannot fire, demote, cut hours, or otherwise punish someone for raising concerns about youth employment violations.¹⁴ These protections apply regardless of the worker’s immigration status.

1
U.S. Department of Labor. Civil Money Penalty Inflation Adjustments
2
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #43 – Child Labor Provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for Nonagricultural Occupations
3
U.S. Department of Labor. Fair Labor Standards Act Advisor – Hours Restrictions
4
U.S. Department of Labor. Fair Labor Standards Act Advisor – Non-Hazardous Occupation
5
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #58 – Cooking and Baking under the Federal Child Labor Provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
6
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #75 – Youth Peddling under the Federal Child Labor Provisions of Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
7
eCFR. 29 CFR Part 570 – Child Labor Regulations, Orders and Statements of Interpretation
8
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #40 – Overview of Youth Employment (Child Labor) Provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for Agricultural Occupations
9
U.S. Department of Labor. Fair Labor Standards Act Advisor – Agricultural Hazardous Occupations
10
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #32 – Youth Minimum Wage – Fair Labor Standards Act
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 216 – Penalties
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 212 – Child Labor Provisions
13
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #21 – Recordkeeping Requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
14
U.S. Department of Labor. Whistleblower Protections