Why it Matters

Child labor violations and the number of children affected by those violations have been on the rise since fiscal year 2015, according to a new federal audit that identified gaps in the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) data tools, outreach measurement, and interagency coordination. An estimated 2.8 million children worked in the U.S. in 2023, and DOL's own enforcement data show violations ranging from children working later than legally permitted to operating meat processing machines.

The Big Picture

The audit found that DOL regional and district officials expressed concern that the data the agency recommended for targeting egregious violations were "not detailed enough to provide useful investigation leads," and that DOL has no systematic process to access alternative data sources.

The legal foundation for child labor protections dates to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938, which included provisions to protect the safety and health of working children under 18. Nearly 90 years later, DOL continues to find numerous child labor law violations.

The labor department publishes statistical data on working children's fatalities, injuries, and illnesses, which are used to develop workplace safety strategies and policies. But the audit identified compounding gaps in that data infrastructure. Some cause-of-death and industry information in DOL's workplace fatality dataset is not publicly available, and DOL changed how it collects injury and illness data for working children, making figures since 2021 incomparable to earlier years.

DOL recently launched a National Strategic Enforcement Initiative on Child Labor to sharpen its enforcement focus, but field-level officials raised concerns about the quality of data being used to direct investigations, and the agency does not have a process to identify and evaluate additional data sources.

The audit also found that DOL's Wage and Hour Division (WHD) lacks procedures to track and analyze questions it receives from field offices about applying hazardous occupations orders, limiting its ability to update guidance based on real-world enforcement experience.

Hazardous occupations orders are the regulatory mechanisms that restrict minors from performing the most dangerous jobs.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reviewed federal data on working children from 2023, child labor fatalities, injuries, and illnesses since 2013, and cited violations from fiscal years 2015 through 2025.

GAO issued five recommendations, all directed to the Secretary of Labor. All five remain open.

The Bottom Line

With all five recommendations still open and the labor department pushing back on the data-gaps finding, and no concrete implementation plans on record, the pace of reform remains to be seen as the department reacts to these latest findings.

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