What happens when states roll back child labor laws?

“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.

What’s happening

Lawmakers in several states have promoted, and in some cases enacted, rules to roll back child labor laws in hopes of creating more opportunities for minors to take on jobs that employers have struggled to fill amid a persistently tight labor market.

While the concept of looser child labor restrictions may evoke historical images of soot-covered 8-year-olds toiling in coal mines, the proposals being put forward recently call for more modest changes to rules governing how much and under what circumstances teenagers can work.

A law signed by Arkansas’s Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders last month, for example, allows 14- and 15-year-olds to work without getting approval from the state, which they previously needed. A bill under consideration in Iowa would expand the number of hours that teens can work and create limited opportunities for them to be employed in certain industries that are currently barred from hiring minors, such as meatpacking. Laws with similar provisions have been proposed in other states, including Minnesota, Ohio, New Hampshire and Missouri.

These moves come amid a troubling uptick in illegal child labor across the country. The number of child labor law violations more than tripled between 2015 and 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Child exploitation is especially severe among migrant children, as chronicled in a recent New York Times story documenting hundreds of young immigrants often found working extended hours and in dangerous environments.

Why there’s debate

The immediate reaction from many liberals to these new child labor laws, which are mostly being pushed by Republicans, was to accuse the GOP of trying to roll back more than a century’s worth of protections designed to keep kids from being taken advantage of by big businesses. “It’s just crazy to me that we are re-litigating a lot of things that seem to have been settled 100, 120 or 140 years ago,” a union president in Iowa told the Guardian.

Supporters of the changes say these complaints are rooted in a complete overreaction to what’s actually in the laws. They argue that critics are conjuring dramatic images of industrial-era child labor practices when, in reality, all these bills do is remove a few of the barriers that keep some teenagers from getting jobs that they want. Many add that beyond the immediate benefit to businesses and the families of teens bringing in extra money, expanding opportunities for minors to work will help them learn important lessons that set them up for career success later in life.

But opponents argue that there are already plenty of open jobs for eager teenagers to fill without loosening laws to create room for them to work in places that until now have been considered too dangerous or prone to abuse. Some on the left also say the main goal of loosened child labor laws is to reduce the power of workers at a time when low unemployment is forcing businesses to pay them more. They argue that there are much simpler ways to solve the labor shortage, like increased immigration.

Perspectives

Critics are pretending that a few minor tweaks to labor laws are some sort of catastrophe

“While the recent attempts to liberalize child labor law have been minimal at best, it hasn’t kept critics from framing the reforms as inherently exploitative and dangerous — an approach that ignores the numerous benefits to employment among teenagers and the scores of teens who desperately want the responsibility and financial independence a job can bring.” — Emma Camp, Reason

Republicans are doing anything they can to help their corporate donors avoid paying workers better salaries

“Since the surge in post-pandemic consumer demand, employers have been having difficulty finding the workers they need at the wages employers are willing to pay. Rather than pay more, employers are exploiting children.” — Robert Reich, Guardian

Working sets young people up for success throughout their lives

“Most successful adults began working as teenagers. Perhaps they delivered newspapers or manned the till at a McDonald’s. Perhaps they spent weeks in the summer detasseling corn or their Saturdays directing cars into parking spots before college football games. But whatever they did, all those people who worked as teenagers learned at a young age an important lesson for adulthood: that they needed to work, earn, and be responsible for making their own way in life.” — Editorial, Washington Examiner

Minors can get the benefits of working without being herded into dangerous and exploitative jobs

“Teenagers who do paid work for five, 10, 15 hours a week in safe jobs can have worthwhile experiences. They can learn responsibility, punctuality and other skills. But rolling back laws so that they can work six hours on school days or until 11 p.m. can have broader negative consequences. It’s important that teens have enough time for school, sports and other activities and enough time with friends and families and for sleep.” — Steven Greenhouse, Los Angeles Times

Looser labor laws are a threat to unions, which is really why the left opposes them

“The reality is that opponents of these state laws are carrying water for Big Labor. The goal is not protecting children. Rather, it’s protecting the pay of current employees by restricting the supply of labor. To the extent that unions can limit employment opportunities, they can command higher wages for existing workers because employers have fewer alternatives.” — Jason L. Riley, Wall Street Journal

These new laws make it easier for companies to exploit underage workers

“The trouble is that it takes little imagination to see how plans for ‘adequate supervision and training’ could slip, innocuously even, into teenagers doing more dangerous work. It’s inevitable that some people will try to bend rules. Lawmakers don’t need to help with stretching them at the outset.” — Editorial, Des Moines Register

The labor shortage could be solved easily without having to expose kids to extra risks

“If the ultimate problem here is a tight labor market, the US could increase legal immigration. But that solution rankles MAGA racial sensibilities.” — Francis Wilkinson, Bloomberg

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Photo illustration: Jack Forbes/Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images