Scheduling Minors: Hour Limits and Work Permits in 20 States

Federal law caps the hours of 14 and 15 year olds and puts almost no limit on anyone older. A 16 or 17 year old has no federal hour cap at all, only a ban on hazardous jobs. That means the rules that decide whether your Friday closing shift is legal come from your state, and they vary a lot. Michigan stops a 17 year old at 10:30 p.m. on a school night, Pennsylvania allows work until midnight, and Oregon sets no evening cutoff.

This guide compares 20 states using each state's own labor agency, legislature or administrative code, as of October 2026. Several of these laws changed recently, so treat the tables as a starting point and confirm against your state's page before you publish a schedule.

What does federal law limit for 14 and 15 year olds?

The hour limits sit in 29 CFR 570.35. While school is in session, a 14 or 15 year old can work no more than 3 hours on a school day (Fridays included) and 18 hours in the week. On a non-school day the cap is 8 hours. In a week when school is not in session it is 40 hours. All of it has to fall between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., except from June 1 through Labor Day, when the evening limit moves to 9 p.m.

The Department of Labor's Fact Sheet #43 restates the same limits and adds a detail that matters in kitchens: 14 and 15 year olds may perform only limited cooking duties, such as cooking on electric or gas grills that do not involve cooking over an open flame.

The Friday rule is the one managers miss. Friday feels like the start of the weekend, but the 3 hour school-day cap applies to it, so a 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday shift is a violation twice over: it is an hour too long and it runs past 7 p.m. during the school year.

What can 16 and 17 year olds do under federal law?

Almost anything that has not been declared hazardous. The Fact Sheet says 16 and 17 year olds may be employed for unlimited hours in any occupation other than those declared hazardous. Federal law does not care whether a 17 year old closes at midnight on a school night or works 45 hours in a week.

Unlimited under federal law does not mean unlimited where you operate. Pennsylvania caps a 17 year old at 8 hours a day and 28 hours in a school week. Washington caps a school week at 20 hours. Michigan caps it at 24. Hour limits are also a separate question from pay, so if a teen's week runs long, the overtime rules work the way they do for any other employee; our guides to overtime policy and how to calculate overtime cover that side.

Which jobs are off limits for minors in restaurants and retail?

The Hazardous Occupations Orders apply to everyone under 18, and four of them show up in food service and retail. Fact Sheet #43 describes them this way:

• HO 10 bans operating power-driven meat processing machines, such as meat slicers, wherever used, including restaurants and delicatessens.
• HO 11 bans operating power-driven bakery machines such as vertical dough and batter mixers.
• HO 12 bans operating all compactors and balers.
• HO 2 bans operating motor vehicles on public roads, which catches delivery shifts.

These are bans on the equipment, not on the building. A minor can work a deli counter and still not touch the slicer. The practical fix is to attach the restriction to the person on the schedule instead of the station, so nobody gets moved to a slicer shift because the week needs a body.

Which law applies when state and federal rules differ?

The stricter one. Arizona's Industrial Commission says it in so many words on its youth employment page: where state and federal law differ, the stricter law takes precedence. The same logic holds elsewhere, and the gaps are easy to see in the data.

Washington caps a 14 or 15 year old at 16 hours in a school week, which is stricter than the federal 18. Texas lets a 14 or 15 year old work 48 hours in a week under state law, but the federal 18 hour school-week cap still applies to employers covered by the FLSA, per the Texas Workforce Commission. Georgia's statute allows 4 hours on a school day, but the Georgia Department of Labor's work hour page lists the federal 3 hours for covered employers.

The simple operating rule is to schedule to whichever number is smaller. If you are unsure whether the FLSA covers your business, scheduling to the federal number costs you very little and protects you from the argument.

How do hour limits and work permits compare across 20 states?

Three tables follow. The first covers 14 and 15 year olds, the second covers 16 and 17 year olds, and the third covers permits and break rules.

Each row comes from the state's own labor agency, legislature or code: California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland.

A few of these rows need a warning label.

• California: the state's own pages give different answers on 16 and 17 year old hours and evening cutoffs, and the most detailed one is a 2013 state pamphlet. Confirm with the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement before scheduling anyone under 18.
• New Jersey: the labor department's own pages say they are being updated, and two of them disagree on the meal break (after 5 hours on one, after 6 on the other). Use the shorter interval until the update posts.
• Ohio: the state code page shows hour rules effective October 9, 2026 under HB 455. The evening hours for under 16 workers come from an older state poster, so check the current statute before relying on them.
• Michigan: the state's FAQ says school districts stop issuing work permits on October 2, 2026, and that permits move to a centralized state system. Another Michigan page gives October 1. Either way, a permit your school issued last spring is something to check now.
• Illinois: the hour rules in the first table are for minors under 16. For 16 and 17 year olds, check with the Illinois Department of Labor.
• Texas, Arizona and Colorado: none of the three requires a work permit. For breaks, check the state's general meal and rest rules, which may apply to minors too.

What does a compliant week look like for a 15 year old?

Say you run a café in Seattle and you schedule a 15 year old, Maya, during the school year. You build her week against the federal limits first:

• Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday: 3 hours each, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. That is 12 hours.
• Saturday: 6 hours, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Federally, this week works. Every school day is at or under 3 hours, the total is 18, Saturday is under the 8 hour non-school-day cap, and nobody works past 7 p.m.

Now check it against Washington. The Department of Labor and Industries caps a 14 or 15 year old at 16 hours in a school week. Maya's schedule is two hours over. The fix is to trim Saturday to 4 hours, which lands the week at exactly 16. The federal check alone would have passed it, and the schedule would have been a violation.

Washington also requires a meal break for minors under 16 after four consecutive hours, and the same state page sets 7 p.m. as the school-week cutoff. Maya's 3 hour weekday shifts never reach the meal break trigger, but a 6 hour Saturday would, so the trimmed 4 hour shift sits right at the line. Keep an eye on that when a manager offers to extend her by half an hour.

Where do schedules break minor rules in practice?

Most violations are not a manager ignoring the law. They are the schedule doing something nobody noticed. Three patterns show up again and again.

Closing shifts that drift. A 16 year old is scheduled to close at 10 p.m. in a state with a 10 p.m. school-night cutoff, and then the kitchen runs late. In Massachusetts, 16 and 17 year olds can work only between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. before a school day (10:15 p.m. if the establishment stops serving at 10), according to the state's work hours page. Late-night cleanup is where compliant schedules turn into real violations.

Weekly totals that do not line up. Your payroll workweek might run Monday to Sunday, while the school week the law cares about is different. A minor who works 14 hours before Sunday and picks up a long Saturday shift can be inside your workweek limit and over a school-week limit. Unless your state's guidance says how to count the week, the safe approach is to track hours against both calendars and use the smaller figure. If it does have a written position, put it in your policy.

Swaps that move a minor past a cutoff. Shift swaps and open-shift pickups are the quiet way a legal schedule becomes an illegal one. A 15 year old picks up a closer's shift at 8 p.m. in April, or a 17 year old takes a shift on a school night that ends past the state cutoff. Whoever approves swaps needs to see age and the cutoff, not just who is available. Our guide to minimum rest between shifts covers a related rule, and the break laws by state article lists meal and rest requirements for adults.

All three can happen, and what catches them is usually a person rather than a policy. The places that handle this well have a shift manager or someone senior on site who knows the rules and is watching for these moments. You cannot rely on the minor, or the coworker they swapped with, to know the state cutoff and what to do when a close runs late. Train your shift leads on the rules for your state, and make sending a minor home on time part of their job.

What should you record for every minor on the schedule?

Four fields, kept where whoever builds the schedule can see them:

1. Date of birth, so the system or the manager knows when a 15 year old turns 16 and the rules change.
2. Permit status: whether a work permit or employment certificate is on file, the issue date, and the expiry date. Washington's parent and school authorization forms expire every September 30, per WAC 296-125-061, and Oregon's employer certificate is annual, so a permit that was valid in June may not be valid in October.
3. School status: school in session or not, and for each date, whether it is a school day or a non-school day. Most limits turn on this, and it changes between September and June.
4. Hours per day and per week, against the lower of the state and federal number.

Keep the proof of age on file even in states that do not require a permit. Florida is a good example: the state's licensing agency says there is no work permit, but employers must obtain and keep proof of age for the length of the minor's employment, per the Florida DBPR FAQ.

What are the penalties for getting it wrong?

Child labor violations carry federal civil money penalties. The Department of Labor's penalty table lists a maximum of $16,035 for a violation of the child labor standards, $72,876 when the violation causes the serious injury or death of a minor, and $145,752 when that violation is willful or repeated. The page shows these amounts as unchanged for 2026. States add their own penalties, and the hazardous-occupation violations are where the injury cases come from.

The dollar amounts are not the best argument for getting this right. A scheduling error that puts a 15 year old on the floor at 8 p.m. is cheap to prevent and expensive to defend, and it rarely looks like negligence in the moment. It looks like a closer who called out and a manager who needed coverage.

What should you do before the next schedule goes out?

Pick the five minors on your next schedule and check each one against three things: the lower of the state and federal daily and weekly numbers, the evening cutoff for their age, and whether the permit is on file and current. If you can't link to the rule behind any of those answers, find it on your state agency's site and put the date next to it.

Then look for the places where the schedule can change without you: swaps, open-shift pickups, and the kitchen running late. Those are the moments where a compliant week turns into a violation. If you are starting a teen hiring push, the barista job description is a useful place to state the age-related limits up front, and a predictive scheduling rule in your city may add its own notice requirements on top.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Child labor rules differ by state and some changed in 2026, so confirm the current rule with your state labor agency before you schedule a minor.