Hazardous Occupations for Minors Under the FLSA: The 17 Orders

Federal law bars workers under 18 from 17 categories of dangerous non-agricultural jobs, imposes a broader set of restrictions on 14- and 15-year-olds, and sets a separate list of banned tasks on farms for anyone under 16. These are the hazardous occupations for minors under the FLSA, codified in 29 CFR Part 570, and violating them costs employers up to $16,035 per child — more if a worker is hurt or killed.¹

The 17 Non-Agricultural Orders for Workers Under 18

The Secretary of Labor has issued 17 Hazardous Occupation Orders (HOs) covering every non-agricultural industry. If you’re under 18, none of this work is legal, whether full-time, part-time, or seasonal. Seven orders (marked with an asterisk) allow a narrow carve-out for registered apprentices and student-learners.

HO 1: Manufacturing or storing explosives
HO 2: Driving a motor vehicle or working as an outside helper
HO 3: Coal mining
HO 4: Forest firefighting, logging, and sawmill work
HO 5*: Operating power-driven woodworking machines
HO 6: Exposure to radioactive substances
HO 7: Operating power-driven hoisting equipment (forklifts, cranes, elevators, derricks)
HO 8*: Operating power-driven metal-forming, punching, and shearing machines
HO 9: Mining other than coal
HO 10*: Meat and poultry processing, including power-driven meat slicers
HO 11: Operating power-driven bakery machines
HO 12*: Operating balers, compactors, and power-driven paper-products machines
HO 13: Manufacturing brick, tile, and similar products
HO 14*: Operating power-driven circular saws, band saws, chain saws, guillotine shears, wood chippers, and abrasive cutting discs
HO 15: Wrecking, demolition, and shipbreaking
HO 16*: Roofing operations and all work on or about a roof
HO 17*: Excavation operations

The orders reach further than the headline categories suggest. HO 2 covers riding along as a helper on delivery routes, not just driving. A limited exception lets 17-year-olds drive automobiles and light trucks on public roads when driving is occasional and incidental to the job, the vehicle weighs under 6,000 pounds, and several other safety conditions are met. No such exception exists for 16-year-olds.²

The Orders Employers Trip Over Most

Some HOs are intuitive. Others cover everyday tasks in restaurants, retail, and construction, and those are where citations pile up.

Deli Slicers and Food Processing Machines

HO 10 isn’t just about slaughterhouses. The ban on power-driven meat-processing machines applies in grocery store delis, restaurants, and sandwich shops. A 17-year-old at a deli counter cannot legally operate a commercial meat slicer, a food chopper, or a grinder, even when the machine is cutting cheese or vegetables. The order covers the machine, not what’s on the blade.²

Roofing and Any Work “On or About a Roof”

HO 16 goes well past laying shingles. The regulation defines “on or about a roof” to include installing satellite dishes, servicing rooftop HVAC units, painting an existing roof, and carpentry on roof trusses or joists. Ground-level tasks tied to roofing — handing materials up to a roofer or tending a tar heater — are also prohibited. A teenager working for a general contractor who gets asked to carry supplies onto a flat commercial roof is doing banned work.²

Excavation and Trenching

HO 17 bans minors from excavating, working in, or backfilling trenches, with one narrow exception: manual digging in trenches no deeper than four feet. Working inside tunnels before driving and shoring are finished, and inside shafts before sinking and shoring are complete, is also off limits. Landscapers and utility contractors need to pay close attention during summer hiring.²

Broader Restrictions on 14- and 15-Year-Olds

Workers aged 14 and 15 face all 17 HOs plus a longer list under 29 CFR Part 570, Subpart C. Where the HOs target specific machines and industries, Subpart C rules out whole categories of physical work. What’s left is essentially clerical, retail, and light food-service tasks.³

Prohibited work for this age group includes:

Any duties in workrooms where goods are manufactured, mined, or processed
Operating, tending, adjusting, cleaning, or repairing any power-driven equipment, including lawn mowers, food slicers, food grinders, and all-terrain vehicles
Driving, riding as a passenger outside an enclosed compartment, or working as a helper on any motor vehicle
Building maintenance or repair, including boiler and engine rooms
Loading or unloading goods onto trucks, railroad cars, or conveyors
Any task requiring a ladder, scaffold, or substitute, plus outside window washing from a sill
Working in freezers or meat coolers, and preparing meats for sale
Youth peddling — selling door-to-door or away from the employer’s establishment

The ladder ban catches employers off guard. A 14-year-old stocking shelves at a hardware store cannot climb a stepladder. The Wage and Hour Division recognizes only one general exception (a one- or two-step footstool) plus a carve-out for certified 15-year-old lifeguards climbing a lifeguard chair.⁴

Cooking and Kitchen Rules

Restaurants employ a lot of 14- and 15-year-olds, and the cooking limits are unusually specific. This age group can use electric or gas grills without an open flame, and deep fryers only if the fryer has an automatic basket-lowering device. Everything else is off limits: rotisseries, pressure cookers, fryolators, high-speed ovens, convection ovens, and most toaster ovens. Baking of any kind is banned. Microwaves are allowed only for warming pre-made food and only if the unit can’t heat above 140°F.⁵

Hours Limits

Even legal tasks become illegal when the schedule breaks these caps:

School days: no more than 3 hours, and only outside school hours
Non-school days: no more than 8 hours
School weeks: no more than 18 hours total
Non-school weeks: no more than 40 hours total
Time of day: between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., extended to 9 p.m. from June 1 through Labor Day

A 15-year-old cashier still breaks the law by clocking four hours on a Tuesday during the school year.⁶

Agricultural Hazardous Occupations

Farm work is governed by a separate rulebook. Where the non-agricultural HOs set the minimum age at 18, the agricultural orders set it at 16. Children under 16 cannot legally perform any of the following on a farm:

Operating any tractor over 20 PTO horsepower, or connecting and disconnecting implements
Operating corn pickers, cotton pickers, grain combines, hay mowers, hay balers, forage harvesters, and similar equipment
Operating trenchers, earthmoving equipment, forklifts, or power-driven saws
Working in a yard, pen, or stall occupied by a breeding bull, boar, or stud horse, or by a sow with suckling pigs or a cow with a newborn calf
Felling, skidding, loading, or unloading timber with a butt diameter over six inches
Working from a ladder or scaffold at a height over 20 feet
Working inside grain storage silos, manure pits, or other structures designed to retain a toxic or oxygen-deficient atmosphere
Handling or applying pesticides labeled Category I (“poison” with skull and crossbones) or Category II (“warning”)
Handling dynamite, black powder, blasting caps, or similar agents
Transporting, transferring, or applying anhydrous ammonia
Driving a bus, truck, or automobile to transport passengers, or riding on a tractor as a passenger

The agricultural parental exemption is broader than the non-agricultural version. A child under 16 can perform hazardous agricultural work on a farm owned or operated by a parent. That exception does not extend to non-agricultural hazardous work in any setting.²

Children as young as 14 can perform certain otherwise-prohibited farm tasks after completing an approved tractor and machinery safety training program, typically run through the Cooperative Extension Service. Employers must keep the completion certificate on file.⁷

Apprentice and Student-Learner Exemptions

Seven of the 17 non-agricultural HOs (5, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 17) allow a limited exemption for 16- and 17-year-olds in formal training. The remaining 10 orders have no exemption at all. Explosives, mining, driving, radiation exposure, and the other unlisted categories are absolutely off limits regardless of training arrangement.⁸

Two categories of workers qualify. Registered apprentices must be registered with the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training or a recognized state apprenticeship agency, with a written apprenticeship agreement. Student-learners must be enrolled in a vocational course at an accredited school, with a written agreement between school and employer covering the training.⁹

Both arrangements require direct and close supervision by a qualified adult, and the hazardous tasks must be incidental to the training rather than the main job. Written agreements have to be available during federal inspections.

The Parental Exemption and Its Limits

A child under 16 can work in a business owned entirely by a parent (or someone standing in place of a parent) without the usual Subpart C age limits for non-hazardous tasks.¹⁰ The exemption has hard walls. It doesn’t reach mining or manufacturing regardless of ownership. And the 17 HOs still apply in full: a parent who owns a roofing company cannot put their 16-year-old on a roof, and a parent who owns a deli cannot let their 17-year-old run the meat slicer.¹¹

Business structure matters. The exemption requires the parent to be the sole employer. If the business is a corporation, a partnership with non-parent partners, or an LLC with a non-parent member, the child is employed by the entity, not the parent, and standard FLSA child labor rules apply.¹⁰

Penalties for Violations

The Wage and Hour Division enforces these rules through civil and criminal penalties. Civil fines run up to $16,035 for each minor involved in a violation. If a violation causes death or serious injury to a worker under 18, the penalty rises to $72,876, and a willful or repeated violation of that kind doubles to $145,752.¹

Fines are assessed per child, not per incident. Assigning three minors to prohibited tasks in a single week exposes an employer to more than $48,000 in fines without anyone getting hurt. Willful violations are also a federal crime, carrying up to $10,000 in criminal fines, and a second conviction can bring up to six months in prison.¹²

Reporting a Violation

Anyone can file a complaint with the Wage and Hour Division — the minor, a parent, a coworker, or a bystander. File online or call 1-866-487-9243. Have the employer’s name and address, a description of the work, and details about the minor’s age and schedule ready. Complaints go to the nearest WHD field office, and staff typically follow up within two business days.¹³

FLSA Section 15(a)(3) prohibits retaliation. An employer who fires, demotes, or otherwise punishes a worker for reporting a violation can be ordered to reinstate the employee, pay back wages, and pay an equal amount in liquidated damages. The protection covers oral and written complaints, and most courts extend it to internal complaints made to the employer.¹⁴

State Laws May Be Stricter

FLSA Section 218 says no provision of the federal act justifies noncompliance with any state law or municipal ordinance setting a higher standard. Whichever law is more protective of the minor controls. If your state bans a task for 16-year-olds that federal law allows, the state ban wins. If federal law prohibits something your state permits, the federal prohibition wins.¹⁵

The federal rules above are the nationwide floor, not the ceiling. Many states add stricter hours limits, more prohibited occupations, mandatory work permits, or lower age thresholds for particular industries. Check both before assigning any task to a minor; state agencies impose their own fines on top of federal penalties.¹⁶

1
eCFR. 29 CFR Part 579 – Child Labor Violations – Civil Money Penalties
2
eCFR. 29 CFR Part 570 – Child Labor Regulations, Orders and Statements of Interpretation
3
eCFR. 29 CFR 570 Subpart C – Employment of Minors Between 14 and 16
4
U.S. Department of Labor. Field Operations Handbook – Chapter 33
5
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 58 – Cooking and Baking under FLSA
6
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 43 – Child Labor Provisions of the FLSA
7
eCFR. 29 CFR 570.72 – Exemptions
8
U.S. Department of Labor. FLSA – Child Labor Rules Advisor – Partial Exemptions
9
U.S. Department of Labor. FLSA and Child Labor – Non-Agricultural
10
eCFR. 29 CFR 570.126 – Parental Exemption
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 213 – Exemptions
12
U.S. Department of Labor. FLSA – Child Labor Rules
13
Worker.gov. Filing a Complaint with the U.S. DOL Wage and Hour Division
14
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 77A – Prohibiting Retaliation Under the FLSA
15
U.S. Department of Labor. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, As Amended
16
U.S. Department of Labor. Employment/Age Certificate