Project 2025 Would Exploit Child Labor by Allowing Minors To Work in Dangerous Conditions With Fewer Protections

Federal laws to protect young workers from dangerous labor were established by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) nearly 100 years ago. They were put in place at a time when injuries and deaths were common among children who left their homes to help support their families amid poverty and economic hardship. Children could be found working in places such as coal mines or on factory assembly lines, where they could develop respiratory illnesses and lose limbs. To mitigate this societal failure, the FLSA defined when, where, and how minors could work, ultimately shifting expectations toward making education children’s primary focus.

Among the restrictions of the FLSA is that it prevents children under age 18 from working in nonagricultural occupations declared hazardous by the U.S. secretary of labor. This requirement is imperative to protect young workers because it keeps them from engaging in dangerous jobs, such as handling explosives or working in places where they may be exposed to radioactive substances.

Despite strong evidence that dangerous child labor can harm young workers, the far-right authoritarian playbook known as Project 2025 proposes eliminating protections against hazardous work for children. Specifically, Project 2025 calls on the U.S. Department of Labor to “amend its hazard-order regulations to permit teenage workers access to work in regulated jobs with proper training and parental consent.” In plain English, revising these “hazard-order regulations” means letting teens work in hazardous jobs. Exploiting child labor sounds extreme because it is extreme—and politicians mostly in far-right states have recently worked to institute these changes. In the past three years alone, “28 states have introduced bills to weaken child labor laws, and 12 states have enacted them.” Republican legislators in Iowa passed a law in direct violation of federal child labor laws to permit 14-year-olds to perform assembly line work in factories and meatpacking facilities. Many of these proposals are a direct result of lobbying by special interest groups, which see children as an opportunity for inexpensive labor that would benefit corporations. Project 2025 would amplify such opportunities.

The Project 2025 proposal and the trends seen in states are particularly alarming given the recent child labor enforcement data from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). Since 2019, there has been an 88 percent increase in cases where children were found to be employed in violation of child labor laws. In fiscal year 2023 alone, the DOL “assessed more than $8 million in penalties, an 83% increase from the previous year.”

Data alone do not adequately convey the real-world risks of dangerous child labor. Recent cases, such as a 16-year-old boy in Wisconsin who died working in a sawmill after he became entangled in a machine, and another teenage boy in Pennsylvania who died after getting pulled into a woodchipper on a worksite, are tragic examples. In addition, despite fatalities, the DOL continues to identify children working in slaughterhouses and meatpacking facilities, long considered hazardous occupations not safe or suitable for minors.

Dangerous child labor can also lead to less obvious harms, such as impaired mental health or disabilities, since kids are still growing and developing. Even when not in dangerous workplaces, illegal labor can negatively affect children’s education. Long shifts on school nights can leave them tired and unable to focus on their schoolwork; a recent news story highlights how employers can pressure kids to work longer hours—or even to skip school to cover shifts.

Remarkably, Project 2025 argues that teens’ interest in dangerous work is a good reason to put them to work in dangerous settings:

Some young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs. Current rules forbid many young people, even if their family is running the business, from working in such jobs. This results in worker shortages in dangerous fields and often discourages otherwise interested young workers from trying the more dangerous job.

Despite blurring its aim with the ambiguous reference to “young adults,” Project 2025 directly targets DOL hazard-order protections for underage teens. Project 2025 fails to recognize that although teens may be attracted to dangerous jobs, they may not understand or fully appreciate the consequences or risks of such labor. Indeed, the law protects minors against many risks regardless of minors’ interest in them, such as drinking alcohol and smoking. Child labor should be no different.

Further, Project 2025 argues that labor shortages in hazardous occupations are a reason to use children as a workforce development strategy. Instead of proposing investments in safe, evidence-based strategies to grow the labor force—such as registered apprenticeships and education and training programs—Project 2025 chooses to put children in harm’s way. Enacting Project 2025’s plan to remove these protections would surely lead to dangerous working conditions for vulnerable workers and result in an increase in injuries and deaths for minors.

It should go without saying that children don’t belong in dangerous factories and should not work around toxic substances. When they work, they deserve to do so in safe conditions that do not compromise their health and well-being or come at the cost of their education. Dangerous child labor was recognized as a moral and societal failure nearly a century ago. Project 2025 wants to take the United States back to this dark time of child labor.