Employer guideRead at source, 4 September 2026

Child Labor Laws by State: Work Permits, Hours and Break Rules for Minors (2026)

State child labor law is three separate questions, and the published summaries get all three wrong in different places. Thirty-two jurisdictions require a permit or certificate before an ordinary 15-year-old works a first shift; four more require one only narrowly, six want proof of age, and eight require nothing. It comes from a school in twenty-two of them and a state agency in thirteen, and in North Dakota the minor own parent signs it. Twenty-four jurisdictions require a meal or rest break for minors — the federal list of those states names thirty-three, ten of which do not hold up at the code, and it leaves Tennessee off. And the one federal hours table everybody copies was last revised 15 July 2025; since then Nevada has cut its under-16 weekly cap, Ohio has loosened an evening rule past what federal law allows, and four states have moved the permit out of the school office. Every row below was read at the statute, the regulation or the state labor department on 4 September 2026.

The federal floor, and the part of it that surprises people

The Fair Labor Standards Act sets a minimum state law can exceed but not undercut. 29 CFR 570.35 confines 14- and 15-year-olds to outside school hours, no more than 3 hours on a school day and 18 in a school week, 8 on a non-school day and 40 in a non-school week, and only between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., the evening hour moving to 9 p.m. from 1 June through Labor Day. One definition in 570.35(b) does more work than it looks: school is in session or not according to the local public school district where the minor lives, not where the employer sits.

The surprise is at the top of the range. Federal law places no hours limit at all on 16- and 17-year-olds. A 17-year-old may work a double on a Tuesday night in term time and the FLSA has nothing to say about it, and thirty states set no hours limit above 16 either, twenty-eight of them no evening limit. What federal law does at 16 and 17 is ban whole occupations: the seventeen Hazardous Occupations Orders at 29 CFR 570.51 to 570.68 cover driving, power-driven hoists, meat slicers, balers, roofing, excavation and wrecking, and they apply until the eighteenth birthday whatever the state says.

Work permits by state: who needs one, who issues it, and who holds it

The word permit hides three documents. In most states it is issued to the minor by a school, and the employer keeps a copy. In four it is issued to the employer: Oregon runs an annual certificate covering every minor on the payroll, Washington puts an endorsement on the employer business licence for each work location, Virginia issues it electronically, and Alabama sells a per-site Class I or Class II certificate. A manager there waiting for a minor to walk in holding working papers is waiting for a document that does not exist. In North Dakota the certificate is signed by the minor own parent.

Two rows deserve a sentence. West Virginia repealed its work permit with SB 427, effective 11 July 2025, replacing it with a parental consent form plus an age certificate the Commissioner of Labor issues to the employer. That landed four days before the federal table was last revised, so a summary built on it describes a regime West Virginia no longer runs. Kansas requires a permit under 16 but exempts any child attending a secondary school in the state, which is nearly all of them.

The permit is migrating from the school office to a state database

Four states have moved the same way, and the dates matter to anyone building onboarding. New Jersey went first: since 2022 the minor and the employer both register in a state database, the caregiver authorises within two weeks, and silence counts as approval. Wisconsin added a state online portal by clearinghouse rule CR 26-015, effective 1 June 2026. Michigan moves issuance from schools to the state labor department under 2024 PA 196 on 1 October 2026, grandfathering minors already employed until they change employer or work location or turn 16. New York follows on 9 May 2027, when Labor Law 135 is replaced with a state database issuing certificates electronically.

So a multi-state onboarding checklist that says obtain working papers from the school will be wrong in Michigan in October and wrong in New York in 2027. The failure mode is quiet: nobody bounces the hire, the file simply has the wrong document in it.

Meal breaks for minors, where the federal list goes wrong

There is no federal meal break, for a minor or anyone else. Short breaks of five to twenty minutes, if given, count as hours worked; a bona fide meal period of thirty minutes or more, taken free of duty, does not. Everything else is state law, and more states protect minors than protect adults. The federal meal-break table lists twenty-three jurisdictions with an adult requirement. A footnote to it names thirty-five with a provision specifically for minors.

That footnote does not survive contact with the state codes. It was last revised on 1 January 2023, and of the thirty-three states it names, ten do not hold up. Colorado, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York and North Dakota have no minor-specific provision in the chapter that would carry one; Rhode Island has a break statute inside its Employment of Children chapter, but written for every employee. Four of the ten, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York and North Dakota, have only a duty to post a notice stating the time allowed for meals, which looks like where the error began. And it leaves out Tennessee, whose 30-minute rule is real, unpaid, and expressly not waivable under 18 even though adults may waive theirs.

What remains is twenty-four jurisdictions and one pattern: the common rule is thirty minutes after five continuous hours, stricter than most adult rules and shorter than a closing shift. Washington goes further, tiering by age at four consecutive hours under 16 and five at 16 and 17. Kentucky, Oregon, Utah and Washington add a paid rest period on top, which is a payroll consequence and not just a scheduling one.

Most of these statutes are silent on pay. Only Ohio says so directly, and it says the rest period need not be counted as hours worked. Louisiana excludes the interval from the working hours of the day and requires it documented in the normal timekeeping system, with edits signed by both the minor and a manager. Wisconsin is the one to watch: a meal period there must be paid unless the minor is genuinely free from duty for the full thirty minutes and free to leave the premises.

What has changed since the federal table was last revised

The federal state-standards table is dated 15 July 2025, and almost every summary copies it. Ten jurisdictions have moved since.

Nevada is the clearest miss. AB 215, chapter 238 of the 2025 statutes, took effect 1 October 2025. It cut the under-16 weekly cap from 48 hours to 40, and added a rule Nevada did not have: non-emancipated high school students aged 16 to under 19 may not work between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. before a school day, with carve-outs for lifeguards, arcade staff, performers and farm work. Both Nevada rows in the federal table are now wrong, and the second reaches 18-year-olds, which no other state nightwork rule does.

The rest are administrative but consequential. Washington replaced its entire youth employment rule chapter on 1 July 2026, renumbering every citation. Colorado adopted new Youth Employment Standards rules from 1 February 2026. Indiana has abolished its registration portal and, on its own labor department statement, no longer requires a break for a minor at all. Maryland added civil penalties up to $16,035 per violation from 1 June 2026 without touching a substantive rule.

State bans that catch frontline employers out

Beyond the federal orders, some state rules land on ordinary shift work. Massachusetts bars anyone under 18 from operating a motor vehicle of any description, bar a golf cart and an auto repair shop, stricter than the federal allowance for 17-year-olds. Michigan bars a minor from a cash transaction at a fixed location after sunset or 8 p.m., whichever is earlier, unless someone 18 or over is present. North Dakota bars 14- and 15-year-olds from all cooking, grilling and frying, and Connecticut bars under-16s from restaurants.

Check a state and an age

Will this shift clear on a school night?

What this means when you write the job ad

Two things follow for anyone advertising shifts a minor might fill. The closing shift is usually the illegal one: a 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. school night is fine for a 17-year-old in thirty states and unlawful for a 15-year-old everywhere, and saying so in the ad saves the interview. And the document, not the hire, is the compliance event. The checklist items are on our new hire forms checklist; the adult break rules that sit alongside these are on meal break laws by state, and the hours rules on overtime laws by state and predictive scheduling laws by state; sector context is in hospitality recruiting and retail recruitment strategies.

Frequently asked questions