Child labor violations rise in US – as Republicans still roll back protections

The number of child labor violations has risen fivefold in the last 10 years, but Republicans across the US are continuing to propose and pass legislation that rolls back protections or regulations for workers under the age of 18.

Republicans in Nebraska, Indiana and West Virginia have successfully passed legislation in 2026 rolling back child labor regulations, with legislation led by Republicans pending in other states, including Florida, Missouri and Virginia.

The efforts to roll back child labor protections at the state level, with the ultimate goal of eroding federal standards, were outlined in Project 2025, the rightwing Heritage Foundation thinktank’s controversial blueprint for more conservative government.

Since 2021, 30 states have proposed legislation that would roll back child labor protections and regulations, with 17 states enacting rollbacks.

“They don’t just want to weaken state standards. They also have this broader goal of eroding the federal standards and the weakening of the state standards is a stepping stone toward that goal,” said Nina Mast, policy and economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute.

“If federal standards are eroded, then they have nothing in place to protect minors from hazardous work, exploitative conditions, being over-scheduled, all these types of violations that we’re already seeing in across the country,” said Mast.

The number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws increased from 1,012 children in fiscal year 2015 to 5,272 in fiscal year 2025, with 773 children illegally employed in hazardous occupations in 2025 compared to 355 in 2015.

Among the child labor investigations conducted by the Department of Labor amid an increase in violations, in 2022 several McDonald’s franchises in Pennsylvania were fined by the US Department of Labor after an investigation found 101 children were working excessive hours outside of allowable time periods. In 2023, another investigation discovered two 10-year-olds working at McDonald’s locations in Kentucky. In January 2025, Perdue and JBS USA reached settlements after an investigation found contractors were employing minors in hazardous occupations at meat processing plants.

Though the Biden administration ramped up enforcement in response to the increase in violations and egregious child labor violations, the Trump administration has presided over a drastic decrease in workplace safety inspections and enforcement, including a 97% decline in wage and hour enforcement cases and a 35% decline in health and safety enforcement cases.

Nebraska’s Republican governor, Jim Pillen, signed legislation into law in February 2026 that reduces the minimum wage for 14 and 15-year-olds from $15 an hour to $13.50 an hour and limited increases to 1.5% annual starting in 2030.

The bill also creates a sub-minimum training wage for 16- to 19-year-olds, set at $13.50 an hour for their first 90 days of employment.

Noel Tonniges, campaigns organizer at the non-profit Nebraska Appleseed, explained efforts to create exemptions to the Nebraska minimum wage law passed by ballot initiative in 2022 began shortly after voters overwhelmingly approved the minimum wage increase, but only gained traction when the most recent bill was introduced in 2025.

“As we continue to see these carve-outs that single out young people, it makes their working conditions worse, but it also means that they’re not able to support family in the same way. It just discourages young people from entering the workplace until they’re eligible for these protections and for these higher wages, because there’s no incentive,” said Tonniges. “We are really alarmed by the precedent that this sets, but we are going to continue to do everything possible to fight back and make sure that young people are protected to the best of our ability.”

Tonniges criticized the claims made in support of cutting minimum wage for young workers, noting Nebraska has an unemployment rate far below the national average, at 3.0% compared to 4.4% nationally, and labor force participation for young workers, ages 16 to 24, was 68% in 2024 compared to 56% nationally.

“Our lawmakers have clearly gone out of their way to say that they devalue this labor. They don’t see it as something important,” she added. “A lot of the rhetoric that we heard from lawmakers between 2025 and 2026 was that entering the workplace is sort of a gift enough to young people, that it is in some way burdensome for workplaces to hire young people, that young people are too unskilled to fully manage the typical expectations of a job, and there’s no data to support that.”

The bill was marked as a priority by the Republican majority in the state legislature and led by a Democrat whose family runs a grocery store chain in Nebraska, Jane Raybould, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“This bill not only rolls back the minimum wage approved by Nebraska voters, it creates a completely new exploitation wage for young workers,” said Megan Hunt, state senator in Nebraska, who voted against the legislation. “If a teen is doing the same job as an older coworker, their labor has the same value. Writing a lower wage into law based solely on age sends the message that some Nebraskans’ work is worth less, and that’s not what voters approved.”

In Indiana, the Republican governor, Mike Braun, signed legislation into law in March 2026 that eliminates all tracking of workers under the age of 18 years old in the state, removing the database system implemented after Indiana Republicans passed legislation in 2020 to eliminate work permits for young workers. Indiana has also extended working hours for teens and eliminated mandatory rest breaks for minors.

The Indiana department of labor assessed over $250,000 in penalties on employers that failed to register youth employment in 2025.

“We believe that eliminating this system compounds the mistake of ending the work permit system,” said Reid Maki, the director of Child Labor Advocacy and the coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition, in a statemen.t “In deciding not to track teen workers, Indiana is making child labor enforcement efforts significantly more difficult.”

A 2024 analysis of federal child labor violations between 2008 to 2020 found states that require youth work permits had 13.3% fewer violation cases and 31.8% fewer minors involved in these violations, by acting as a deterrent for employers and serving to enhance awareness and monitoring of child labor laws.

The bill’s author, Indiana representative Jake Teshka, did not return calls for comment.

In West Virginia, Republicans passed legislation, HB 4005, that will eliminate the list of hazardous occupations for workers under the age of 18, a year after they passed legislation ending the requirement of work permits for young workers.

“It constitutes probably the most significant child labor law rollback that I’ve ever seen, at least in this state,” said Seth DiStefano, senior policy outreach director at the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. “Essentially what it does is it more or less is going to put 16- and 17-year-old kids in direct competition with adults for a lot of jobs that 16- and 17-year-old kids used to be prohibited from doing.”

He dismissed claims that the bill is predicated on creating apprenticeship opportunities for teen workers, as it removes direct supervision requirements for teen workers. Rather, he argues, it creates a cheaper labor pool for employers in West Virginia.

“What they’re after is cheap labor,” DiStefano concluded. “This, in essence, is a cheap labor bill. The reason this is happening is because the West Virginia Manufacturers Association and their members want to pay less.”

The author of the bill, West Virginia delegate Ryan Browning, disputed that the bill rolls back child labor laws.

“HB4005 lines up state code with federal codes,” said Browning, in a statement. “While I appreciate concern for allowing this type of apprenticeship, I do not agree with the statement that we are rolling back youth labor laws in a sense that we are going to allow companies to exploit them.”

The US Department of Labor did not respond to multiple requests for comment.