Yes, the labor market is tight. No, child labor is not the solution

The pandemic upended America’s workforce, and the labor market is still reeling, with 3 million fewer Americans working today compared to February 2020. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “every state is facing an unprecedented challenge finding workers to fill open jobs.”

At the same time, states across the country are attempting to weaken child labor protections. Lawmakers in more than 10 states have looked to loosen child labor laws in the past two years, reportedly targeting these laws as a way to address the tight labor market, and to appease businesses who say they need workers. One Ohio state senator, who introduced a bill that would allow children to work later without parental approval, said the change was necessary to help businesses find “adequate staffing.”

But that reasoning is a facade, labor experts say. Women were pushed out of the workforce in droves and struggle to reenter the labor market, in part because of the high cost of child- and eldercare. Similarly, good jobs that actually meet people’s pay and safety needs could bring people into industries facing shortages. Among workers who lost their jobs in the pandemic, 27% say the need to be home and care for family keeps them from returning to work, and 28% say they have been prioritizing their health over looking for work, according to the Chamber of Commerce. As other reasons for not returning to the labor force, workers also pointed to low wages and the fact that “there just aren’t enough good jobs available” in industries hit hard by the pandemic.

“It’s a smokescreen, because [people] want to go to work for better jobs, and to jobs that allow them to invest in their family,” says Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director of the Worker Institute at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.

There are ways to address a labor shortage without rolling back child labor laws and putting kids in dangerous working conditions, labor experts say. One is to simply take care of workers and provide better jobs. Especially after the pandemic, Campos-Medina notes, “workers have to feel that their health and safety is a priority. . . . They want their rights to be respected in the workplace.” A 2022 study found that workers would be more likely to consider taking meatpacking jobs during the pandemic if they paid better or came with benefits like health insurance or a signing bonus.

Another solution is to help workers who have had to leave the workforce come back—primarily women who “have been pushed out of the labor market,” Campos-Medina says, and who are shouldering the burden of child- and eldercare. As of April 2022, women’s participation in the labor force was still a full percentage point lower than it was before the pandemic. That means that about 1 million women are missing from the workforce. A February 2022 survey conducted by McKinsey and the Marshall Plan for Moms found that 45% of moms with kids ages five and under, who left the workforce during the pandemic, “cited childcare as a major reason for their departure.” (Just 14% of fathers said the same.)

“[Political leaders] need to start looking at ways to bring women back to the workplace because women are holding [off] going back to work because child care is unaffordable, eldercare is unaffordable,” Campos-Medina says. “All the states that are arguing for loosening up child labor laws should actually be figuring out how to . . . invest in affordable childcare for workers.”

Along with bills that would loosen child labor laws—like one that passed in the Iowa Senate last week allowing teens to work longer hours and in jobs that are currently prohibited—there have been a string of child labor violations, where corporations were found to be employing children illegally. One prominent case announced in February involved 102 children, from 13 to 17 years old, employed at meat processing plants in eight states.

Across the country, such violations have been rising: The U.S. Department of Labor announced in February that it would take on new efforts to combat this exploitation after seeing a 69% increase in “children being employed illegally by companies” since 2018.

There are many steps lawmakers can take to protect children from unsafe working conditions and many factors at play around the prevalence of child labor—like immigration policies and the number of migrant children coming to the U.S. without their parents, Campos-Medina adds. But it’s also about the realities of the current labor market. “What are the working conditions of that market, and what do we need to do to fix it?” she asks.

Making jobs better and supporting female workers who have been forced to leave the workforce are market actions that can address a labor shortage. In the meantime, she adds, Congress needs to crack down on child labor violations and on states that run afoul of federal labor laws, and “reinforce that we are beyond an industrial-era labor market system. . . . We are done with the industrial era, why are we going back to expecting children to work?”