Public education systems and the incidence of child labor have historically been intertwined (Lleras-Muney, Reference Lleras-Muney2002). As a recent report suggests, “[o]f the several factors that contribute to a reduction in child labor, there is broad consensus that improving access to quality schooling plays a prominent role in preventing and reducing child labour” (UNICEF, 2024, p. 2). Moreover, both public education and child labor have been linked to labor market outcomes (e.g., Allmendinger, Reference Allmendinger1989; Doran, Reference Doran2013). Thus, simultaneous proposed changes to both child labor regulations and public education funding ought to be evaluated for their impact on the workforce.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze a suite of interrelated policies (some enacted, some proposed) that will have the ultimate effect of increasing the presence of minors in the workforce. Specifically, we argue that policies designed to minimize funding for traditional public education coupled with policies designed to minimize regulations and protections around the employment of minors interact with one another to increase the proportion of minors in the workplace. We then explore the impacts of this ultimate result for both industrial-organizational (I-O) research and practice. We focus on (a) increased underemployment and (b) increased workplace accidents, injuries and hazards in the workplace as clear points for necessary research and practice. Further, we highlight the need for I-O psychologists to become more adept at conducting research and practice with minors.
Public education and employment of minors
The U.S. public education system is a patchwork of local, state, and federal administrative processes. Financing is primarily a state and (especially) local responsibility, though the federal government contributed 13.6% of the total revenue received by public elementary and secondary schools in fiscal year 2022 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022a). The bulk of federal funding comes from the Department of Education (ED), and these dollars primarily fund two areas: Title I (a program providing support for districts with a high proportion of students in poverty), and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA–a program providing support for students with disabilities). Additionally, a portion of Medicaid dollars flow to school districts to provide services, pay for certain staff (including nurses and counselors), and procure needed equipment (including wheelchairs or other medical devices that enable a student to attend class). Although funding from ED represents less than 4% of the federal budget, elementary and secondary education represents the second largest expenditure for state and local governments. In 2022, state and local governments spent over $917 billion on elementary and secondary education, representing one-fifth of total state and local direct general expenditures that year (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022b). The combined investments of all levels of government have long served a dual purpose: to educate and to regulate the participation of minors in the labor market by extending schooling and delaying entry into full-time work. In this sense, compulsory education laws and the public dollars that support them function simultaneously as a commitment to child development and a mechanism to shape the American labor supply.
ED plays an indirect but powerful role in reinforcing child labor laws through conditional funding. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which amended the landmark Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, ED requires states to identify schools that are not meeting student needs and develop plans for improvement. Further, Title I funding is contingent on compliance with the ESSA, including certain accountability requirements, giving states a strong incentive to keep children in school and, by extension, out of the labor force.Footnote 1 As Johnson (Reference Johnson2015) found, Title I funding is largely effective: Increases in funding are positively associated with educational attainment and reductions in the incidence of poverty in adulthood.
To expand access for historically underserved students, Congress enacted the Bilingual Education Act of 1967 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1975. These laws marked a significant increase in federal involvement to promote educational equity for English language learners and students with disabilities. Today, ED plays a central role in protecting the civil rights of these and other groups through the Office of Civil Rights, which investigates discrimination complaints filed against schools (Cardichon & Darling-Hammond, Reference Cardichon and Darling-Hammond2020). Expanding equal access to education has not only diversified school populations but also contributed to reductions in child labor by drawing more students into formal schooling.
The ED does not directly enforce child labor laws; that responsibility lies with the Department of Labor (DOL). The DOL enforces provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which sets minimum age standards, restricts work hours for youth, and prohibits youth from working in hazardous occupations. In its most recent report to Congress, DOL noted a 31% increase in the number of children employed in violation of federal child labor laws between 2019 and 2024, likely reflecting both increased investigation and enhanced enforcement (U.S. Department of Labor, 2024). The DOL also engages in community education and detection efforts. For instance, DOL staff met with public school counselors in Alabama to “educate them about child labor exploitation and how schools can partner to protect youth” (DOL, 2024, p. 16). Interagency coordination has also grown in recent years. In 2023, the DOL led the Interagency Task Force to Combat Child Labor Exploitation, which collaborated with ED and other departments to “improve cross-training, outreach, education and health outcomes of children that could be subject to child labor” (U.S. Department of Labor, 2023). One tangible result was ED’s commitment to share information with education stakeholders, enabling schools to better inform young people and families about their rights.
The federal government has a longstanding, legally enshrined commitment to free, publicly funded education for children. Through statutes like the ESSA, IDEA, and civil rights protections, federal policy has affirmed that children belong in school, not in workplaces. Nevertheless, recent policies at the state and federal levels highlight a growing emphasis on child labor and the tension between preparing students to later thrive in the workforce and pushing them into it prematurely.
Increased presence of minors in the workforce
Reporting (Bogage & Paúl, Reference Bogage and Paúl2023) has revealed the Foundation for Government Accountability authored various pieces of legislation at the state level that explicitly roll back labor protections for minors (for a review of recent state legislation on child labor see Fletcher (Reference Fletcher2025). These actions include increasing the hours minors can work per day and per week, decreasing oversight of minors in the workplace, and decreasing minors’ guaranteed minimum pay (Fletcher, Reference Fletcher2025). A poignant example of this legislation is Florida statue 450.081, signed into law in 2024. This legislation allows homeschooled children to work during school hours, allows parents to waive the limitations on minors’ work hours, and explicitly reduces work-hour regulations for 16- and 17-year-olds. Further, reporting has highlighted that “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” (Goodman, Reference Goodman2024).
Simultaneously, the Foundation for Government Accountability has advocated for reforms to public education such as school voucher policies (e.g., Foundation for Government Accountability, 2024) that work to erode access to high quality public education in favor of privatization of education (e.g., Lubienski, Reference Lubienski2006). For example, Arizona enacted a school voucher program in 2022 that has resulted in further differences in education access between the wealthy and families with fewer financial resources (Lewis & Kirsch, Reference Lewis and Kirsch2023). In line with this, federal implementation of education vouchers has been proposed (Exec. Order No. 14191, 2025) along with elimination of the Department of Education (Exec. Order No. 14242, 2025). Additionally, it is expected that Title I funding will decrease by $18 billion over the next 10 years (Stone, Reference Stone2024). Together, these education-focused policies will work to decrease access to high quality education particularly for low-income families.
Given that high-quality education has been linked with decreased incidence of child labor (UNICEF, 2024), and that working more than 20 hours per week and attending lower resourced schools is associated with school dropout (Rumberger & Lim, Reference Rumberger and Lim2008), we argue that the policies that deregulate the involvement of minors in the workplace and those that increase the privatization and deregulation of education will work together to increase the share of minors, particularly those from low-income families, in the labor force. As Wu (Reference Wu2024) puts it, “legislators have recently eased their child labor regulations in response to labor shortages” (p. 352). This holds clear implications for workers of all ages and for the field of I-O psychology.
Implications of working minors
We argue that these policies work to increase the presence of minors in the workplace while also reducing the cost of employing these minors (e.g., Mast, Reference Mast2024). In doing so, these policies may act as a threat to all workers’ resources while also reducing access to resources for employed minors. This holds a wide range of implications for the workplace and I-O psychologists.
Underemployment
Research (e.g., Allan et al., Reference Allan, Duffy and Collisson2018, Reference Allan, Autin and Wilkins-Yel2021, Reference Allan, Kim and Pham2024; Feldman, Reference Feldman1996) has identified a variety of forms of underemployment including low pay, precarious work, and overqualification. Given the suite of policies outlined above, it stands to reason that minors may be seen as a threat to working adults’ job and pay security. Succinctly stated, “[w]hen there are more workers willing to work at a given wage than there are jobs, workers will compete and drive down wages. Hence, the more child workers in the economy, the lower the wages of jobs those children compete for (unskilled work)” (Edmonds, Reference Edmonds2016, p. 3). Moreover, the lack of access to a high-quality education can perpetuate underemployment over one’s lifespan (Duffy et al., Reference Duffy, Kim, Perez, Prieto, Torgal and Kenny2022), suggesting that not only would the previously described suite of policies impact the workforce through increased labor supply but also by creating an expanded permanent class of workers with reduced upward mobility and access to decent work.
The prevalence of precarious work, like overall underemployment, is thought to be, in part, an outcome of labor market factors (Benach et al., Reference Benach, Vives, Amable, Vanroelen, Tarafa and Muntaner2014). Job insecurity, specifically, has been linked to the unemployment rate (Ellonen & Nätti, Reference Ellonen and Nätti2013). The increase in the share of teens in the labor market because of the focal policies will likely result in a higher unemployment rate, and thus greater job insecurity, particularly in positions that do not require formal education. These jobs are already marked by low pay (Sayre & Conroy, Reference Sayre and Conroy2024) and will likely see even lower levels of pay (Dimova, Reference Dimova and Zimmermann2021).
Similarly, research suggests that overqualification is more common when unemployment rates are high as it may be serve as a way to escape unemployment (Garcia-Mainar & Montuenga-Gómez, Reference García-Mainar and Montuenga-Gómez2020). However, both precarious work and stable underemployment/ overqualification are associated with higher levels of distress and lower levels of meaningful work, safety, access to healthcare, pay, and rest compared to full employment (Allan et al., Reference Allan, Kim and Pham2024).
Thus, we argue that I-O practitioners must become more adept at identifying and addressing underemployment in its various forms. Recent work suggests that helping others and viewing one’s work as contributing to a greater good can increase the perceived meaningfulness of work (Allan et al., Reference Allan, Duffy and Collisson2018), which may help to allay some of the negative mental health outcomes associated with underemployment. Other organizational-level interventions that include multilevel participation in managing the challenges associated with precarious work can also help address perceived job insecurity (Abildgaard et al., Reference Abildgaard, Nielsen and Sverke2018).
From a research perspective, more work is needed on the direct impact of youth employment on broad experiences of underemployment. These studies ought to explore local and industry-related effects of changes in employment trends on both employed youth and adult workers. Additionally, longitudinal studies exploring the impacts of employment (particularly at the expense of education) during youth on the workers themselves are needed to better understand the long-term impacts on mental, physical, and economic well-being.
Workplace accidents and injuries
Another likely outcome of the increased presence of minors in the labor force is an increased rate of accidents and injuries. First, some of the policy rollbacks that have been enacted remove safeguards around employment of minors in hazardous industries or workplaces, instead simply protecting against hazardous work duties (Fletcher, Reference Fletcher2025). Additionally, employed minors are at a greater risk for nonfatal injuries and microaccidents compared to older workers (Turner et al., Reference Turner, Deng, Granger, Wingate, Shafqat and Dueck2022). Turner and colleagues (2022) point out that the lower rate of more serious or fatal injuries/accidents among teen workers may be due to reduced workhours and increased safeguards against risky work, both of which are at risk with the focal changes to policy. Supporting this, teens with greater job tenure, exposure to workplace physical hazards, higher workload, and job boredom as well as visible minority status are more likely to be injured (Breslin et al., Reference Breslin, Day, Tompa, Irvin, Bhattacharyya, Clarke and Wang2007; Frone, Reference Frone1998). Others point toward a greater likelihood of risk-taking behaviors among teens (e.g., Pek et al., Reference Pek, Turner, Tucker, Kelloway and Morrish2017) as a risk factor for youth injury in the workplace, especially when coupled with coworker risk taking, supervisory influence, and parental risk taking (Westaby & Lowe, Reference Westaby and Lowe2005).
Having an increased share of minors in the workforce, particularly in hazardous occupations, may also increase adult workers’ rates of accidents and injuries. Beyond the association between underemployment and reduced workplace safety broadly (Allan et al., Reference Allan, Kim and Pham2024), coworkers’ safety violations are associated with increased production pressure, reduced safety motivation, and ultimately increased safety violations (Liang et al., Reference Liang, Lin, Zhang and Su2018). Thus, having minors in the workplace, who are “at a disadvantage when it comes to improving their safety at work” (Loughlin & Frone, Reference Loughlin, Frone, Barling and Frone2004, p. 120), will likely increase pressure on adult coworkers to act unsafely as well.
Additionally, some attention has been paid to the sexual harassment of teens in the workplace (e.g., Houle et al., Reference Houle, Staff, Mortimer, Uggen and Blackstone2011; Stewart & Davison, Reference Stewart and Davison2019). As with safety, there are concerns about teens’ unique susceptibility to coercion from adult supervisors or coworkers (Drobac, Reference Drobac2006). Some evidence suggests that rates of reported sexual harassment in employed teen girls are higher than in employed women, and that it can be associated with academic withdrawal (Fineran & Gruber, Reference Fineran and Gruber2009). This is particularly concerning given that many legislative actions focused on child labor seek to further enable teens to serve alcohol or work in environments where alcohol may be consumed (Fletcher, Reference Fletcher2025). Research suggests that environments marked by alcohol consumption are associated with increased risk of experiencing sexual harassment (O’Hare & O’Donohue, Reference O’Hare and O’Donohue1998). When combining this risk with the risk that power differentials such as relying on tips (e.g., (Kundro et al., Reference Kundro, Burke, Grandey and Sayre2022) or age differences, teens may be particularly susceptible to sexual harassment (Plaisance, Reference Plaisance2008).
From a practical perspective, the changes in policies that will increase the presence of minors in the workplace, particularly in physically hazardous workplaces, necessitate an increased focus on safety. Some research has explored early interventions around workplace safety knowledge (e.g., Guerin et al., Reference Guerin, Okun, Barile, Emshoff, Ediger and Baker2019; Miara et al., Reference Miara, Gallagher, Bush and Dewey2003). Others point toward supervisors (e.g., Barling et al., Reference Barling, Loughlin and Kelloway2002) and coworker norms as points of intervention to increase workplace safety broadly (Pek et al., Reference Pek, Turner, Tucker, Kelloway and Morrish2017). Organizations may also opt out of hiring minors if they are in a particularly hazardous industry, given the cost associated with workplace accidents and injuries (estimated to be $167 billion in the United States in 2022; NSC, 2022).
From a research perspective, more work is needed to explore the impact of minors on safety climate and ultimately safety performance. Meta-analytic results suggest that coworker influence has a clear influence on safety climate (He et al., Reference He, Wang and Payne2019), so it might be the case that as the number of coworkers who are adolescents increases, safety climate may weaken. Additionally, further exploration into the unique risk factors for adolescents’ unsafe behaviors is needed. It may be that adolescents systematically underestimate their own risk as compared to adults (e.g., Cohn et al., Reference Cohn, Macfarlane, Yanez and Imai1995) or that teens have less mature decision-making skills than adults in socially coercive or emotionally arousing situations (Steinberg & Scott, Reference Steinberg and Scott2003).
Research/consulting with minors
Last, if teens increasingly become a permanent fixture in the workplace, I-O psychologists need to develop the skills to do research and practice with them. First, research suggests that the overwhelming majority of institutional review boards require parental consent for any research with minors and when presented with a survey-based study design the percent of Institutional Review Boards requiring parental consent ranged from 51% to 72% depending on the content (Mammel & Kaplan, Reference Mammel and Kaplan1995). However, recent arguments suggest that minors who are at least 16 years of age are developmentally able to provide their own consent, and that researchers have an ethical obligation to include minors in their research (Mathews, Reference Mathews2022). Currently, the Department of Health and Human Services suggests that the requirement for parental consent may be waived under certain circumstances and suggests alternative guardrails to ensure adequate protections for minors such as assent monitors or child advocates. This suggests that I-O psychologists will likely need to become familiar with gaining parental consent in their research designs and ought to consider what the equivalent of parental consent or similar guardrails looks like in an applied workplace setting.
Additionally, researchers and practitioners must consider whether our measures demonstrate invariance when comparing minors and adults in the workplace. It may be the case that cognitive or social differences between adolescents and adults alter the interpretation and understanding of our measures, thereby limiting the quality of our inferences. This may particularly be the case if these minors have abandoned schooling to work full time.
Conclusion
We suggest that the interlinking policies designed to roll back child labor protections and undermine public education will result in an increased presence of minors in the workplace. This will have ramifications on the experience of work for the minors themselves as well as other employees, particularly in entry-level jobs or “low skill” industries. We provide research questions and guidance for I-O psychologists preparing to enter this new era of work.
Open access
