But as the country’s workforce has shifted over the nearly 90 years since the FLSA was enacted, the FLSA’s overtime rate has not.

Recently, the Double Wage for Overtime Act was introduced by Rep. Casar (D-Texas) in the House and by Sen. Gallego (D-Ariz.) in the Senate. The Act would strengthen overtime protections for more than 13 million workers by amending the overtime rate for the first time since 1938. It would raise overtime pay from 1.5 times a worker’s regular rate of pay to double the regular rate.

How would this affect pay, hours worked, and employment?

The potential to significantly increase workers’ earnings is notable. A worker making $25 an hour and working 10 hours overtime a week for a full year would gain $6,500 more in annual income, all else equal. But, as with any change to overtime policies, employers could respond to the new standard differently, based on the needs of their workplace. In particular, some workers who often work overtime may work fewer overtime hours, as employers adjust schedules and spread work to minimize having to pay the overtime premium. But, due to the double overtime rate, overall compensation for working people would still rise.

The Double Wage for Overtime Act also serves as a mechanism to narrow race and gender pay gaps by boosting pay in historically undercompensated, overtime-eligible sectors, where women and workers of color are disproportionately represented, due to the broad impacts of racism and sexism on labor market outcomes.

Finally, the bill offers a strong deterrent to employers who might otherwise overwork employees. Stronger overtime protections incentivize fairer and more reasonable scheduling, and act as a protection against unpredictably long hours. And, by incentivizing employers to spread hours out to employees who work less than 40 hours a week, stronger overtime protections are also likely to reduce the number of workers who are working part-time “involuntarily” (because they can’t get enough hours).

Any impact on employment is likely to be small, but positive. Some might argue, as they often do in opposing minimum wage increases, that requiring businesses to pay their employees more would reduce employment. But the overwhelming body of evidence on minimum wage increases shows that they raise wages without causing meaningful job losses.

Moreover, increasing the overtime premium differs from increasing the minimum wage in an important way. A higher minimum wage requires employers to raise the pay of all workers earning below the new minimum. By contrast, employers have considerable flexibility in responding to a higher overtime premium. Rather than paying the higher overtime rate, they could hire additional workers or offer more hours to employees who currently work part-time. In part because employers have these alternatives, any employment effect of increasing the overtime premium is likely to be positive.

How does this compare with “No tax on overtime”?

The legislation is far better for working people than Republicans’ “no tax on overtime” policy. Although a tax deduction may sound like a compelling way to help people who work overtime, it is a deeply flawed policy with very uneven benefits. It largely benefits middle-to-high-income earners, provides only modest tax savings for those workers who do qualify, leaves some workers worse off, and preserves financial gains for employers who overwork employees. Strengthening overtime standards—instead of offering gimmicky tax cuts—is the real way to deliver for working people.

How would this affect local economies and businesses?

As mentioned above, if this legislation were to take effect, businesses would have choices and flexibility as to how to comply. Firms may hire additional employees, which would increase employment in the overall economy. They may also choose to innovate and become more efficient in how they direct their employees’ use of time. Reducing excessive numbers of work hours may also improve worker health, concentration, and lead to fewer fatigue-related accidents, which would increase productivity in the workplace, benefiting workers and employers alike.

Though employers can respond to an increase in overtime protections in many ways, the increase would raise labor costs, as it puts money in workers’ pockets. Importantly, this is unlikely to translate into higher prices for consumers. Research on minimum wage increases, which raise labor costs, finds little-to-no inflationary impact from minimum wage increases. And minimum wage increases are a much greater shock to labor costs than an increase in the overtime premium. Increases in the minimum wage affect all hours worked for impacted workers, while the higher overtime rate would only affect hours worked past 40 in a week, a small fraction of total hours worked.

In fact, the Double Wage for Overtime Act would boost affordability by helping ensure that workers actually earn enough in wages to cover the cost of living with dignity and security. The potential income increase for working-class households would have a positive effect on local businesses as well. When workers have more money in their pockets, they can put that money back into their communities.

In short, increasing the overtime wage premium would strengthen one of the nation’s foundational labor standards, putting more money in workers’ pockets while encouraging employers to create jobs, instead of relying on excessive overtime. The Double Wage for Overtime Act is a straightforward opportunity for lawmakers to tackle continued affordability concerns. It is a long overdue modernization of overtime pay that would benefit millions.

Affordability—or the lack thereof—has dominated the recent political debate in the U.S. And for good reason. Across the country, too many families are struggling to make ends meet. However, almost every conversation about affordability focuses entirely on prices, as if the only way to make life more affordable is to make things cheaper. 

But the actual driver of today’s affordability squeeze is suppressed pay—a consequence of decades of policy choices that weakened workers’ bargaining power and shifted income away from working people. Had pay for typical workers kept pace with productivity over the past 45 years, their paychecks today would be roughly 40% larger. 

If policymakers are serious about addressing affordability, they would champion one institution that has consistently proven capable of raising pay: unions.

Through collective bargaining, unions are the most effective mechanism for workers to raise their wages and secure their fair share of the wealth they produce. Our new report at the Economic Policy Institute quantifies how transformative it would be to rebuild union power. Specifically, we examine what we stand to gain if we tripled current union membership to 30%—similar to its peak in the U.S. before decades of relentless attacks on unions and collective bargaining eroded it, and just shy of the current rate in Canada.

We find that tripling union membership would raise pay for the typical worker by more than $7,700 every year, or nearly $270,000 over a 35-year career. This would be life-changing for a working family—nearly covering the cost of raising a child from birth through age 17, for example.

Read the full piece here. 

Weak #jobsreport all around
-Nonfarm payrolls fell by 23,000 (mostly driven by state and local losses)
-The unemployment rate ticked down for the “wrong” reasons as labor force participation and employment-to-population ratio softened
-Nominal wage growth decelerated to 3.2% over the year
#EconSky

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— Elise Gould (@elisegould.bsky.social) 7:47 AM · Aug 7, 2026

Large losses in the public sector in July (-53k), particularly in local education (-49.6k jobs). An initial look doesn’t suggest an issue with seasonal adjustment because losses were also registered in NSA data for June and July. Local education jobs have fallen by nearly 100k (-98.3k) since March.

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— Elise Gould (@elisegould.bsky.social) 8:01 AM · Aug 7, 2026

While public sector weakness in July was centered around state and local jobs, federal jobs ticked down by 3,000. Federal employment remains 327,000 below its January level. The vital services federal employees provide cannot be done without these essential workers (e.g. food inspectors).
#EconSky

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— Elise Gould (@elisegould.bsky.social) 8:12 AM · Aug 7, 2026

Although manufacturing employment ticked up slightly in July (+5k), manufacturing jobs are still down by 62k since January 2025.

Instead of adding these blue collar jobs, the manufacturing sector has lost 62,000 jobs since Trump took office.

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— Elise Gould (@elisegould.bsky.social) 8:16 AM · Aug 7, 2026

Nominal wage growth decelerates in July, rising just 3.2% over the year. Slowing nominal wage growth suggests workers don’t have the leverage to bid up their wages. And, along with rising prices, workers and their families continue to find it difficult to make ends meet.

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— Elise Gould (@elisegould.bsky.social) 8:26 AM · Aug 7, 2026

Key takeaways:

• The CROWN Act is legislation that protects students, workers, and housing applicants from race-based hair discrimination.
• 30 states have enacted some version of the CROWN Act, building momentum for a federal version to pass in Congress.
• Expansions of civil rights laws like the CROWN Act are more urgent than ever given Trump administration efforts to weaken nondiscrimination protections.

In an era of Trump administration attacks on nondiscrimination protections and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, workers and students need the guardrails included in the CROWN Act more than ever.

The CROWN Act stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair. It expands existing civil rights law to prohibit race-based hair discrimination in schools, housing, and workplaces. Far from being solely focused on aesthetics, the CROWN Act protects against implicit bias and policing of Black and brown bodies. It codifies hair discrimination as racism and prohibits employers, public schools, and housing agencies from imposing whiteness as the uniform for success.

The CROWN Act is now law in 30 states

Pennsylvania and Rhode Island became the most recent states to pass the law in 2025, joining a growing list of states that have passed some form of the CROWN Act. Similar to the limited protections in Kentucky (which only provides public service and employee protections), Missouri also recently passed a limited version of the law that only applies to educational institutions—not workplaces or housing.

Figure A

Since the start of the second Trump administration, five states (Florida, Mississippi, Ohio, North Carolina, and South Carolina) have introduced at least one version of the CROWN Act.

Expanding CROWN Act legislation at the local level can be a significant incremental step toward expanding protections more broadly. In at least three of the states that introduced legislation, local CROWN laws have been adopted in cities including Charlotte, North Carolina, Columbus, Ohio, and Miami Beach, Florida. Such local policies have proven helpful in laying groundwork for passage of state laws elsewhere; for example, localities in Pennsylvania and Missouri passed CROWN Act laws years prior to these passing at the state level.

It’s time to pass the CROWN Act in Congress

Representative Watson Coleman (D-NJ) and Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced a federal version of the CROWN Act in the House and Senate last February. Neither bill has received a vote. With 60% of states already having passed the CROWN Act, the policy clearly has enough popular support to pass both chambers and become law.

A federal CROWN Act would provide consistent nationwide protection against hair discrimination for workers—especially Black women workers who have larger pay disparities and who are intersectionally impacted by a history of racist laws. Over 38.7% of Black women workers live in states where they are vulnerable to hair-based discrimination, based on the most recent 2024 data. That’s a slight improvement from the 44% of Black women workers who lacked protections in 2023, thanks to six more states—Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont—recently passing some version of the CROWN Act.

Table 1

Although some states did not have large enough populations of Black women to be tracked in the data presented in Table 1, Black students and workers in states with smaller Black populations remain susceptible to discrimination. In South Dakota, for example, a student was told to cut their locks or leave school. Black students have shared similar stories in states across the country with varying Black population density.

Expansion of the CROWN Act must be coupled with strong enforcement

In an anti-DEI political climate, preventing hair-based discrimination must be coupled with addressing a growing crisis in federal and state nondiscrimination enforcement systems. Current threats to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) enforcement mission are eroding protections for Black and brown workers. The EEOC was established by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the same law that the CROWN Act would expand) and was designed to be an independent federal agency to protect workers and promote fairness and equity in employment. The EEOC’s role in reducing discrimination has helped to boost average income by $493 to $1,233 per person since 1960. Historically, the EEOC has been a key source of protection for Black and brown people and women: A third of all EEOC charges were related to race (29,338) or sex (26,941) last year.

Figure B

Last year, the Trump-appointed chair of the EEOC hijacked the agency’s mission by actively soliciting complaints from white male workers and encouraging “DEI-related discrimination” claims of “reverse racism.” In addition to assigning a new chair, the Trump administration has weakened the EEOC by removing the ability to collect full pay data, limiting gender data collection, and removing commissioners—preventing a quorum and disrupting proceedings.

The Civil Rights Act itself and the protections that the EEOC was created to enforce are at risk. And some states are following the Trump administration’s lead by weakening state-level civil rights laws and enforcement systems. For example, in 2025, Iowa became the first state in history to strip nondiscrimination protection from a protected class when it removed gender identity from its state Civil Rights Act. In response, many cities and counties expanded their local civil rights ordinances to ensure protections against discrimination based on gender identity, but in 2026 the state went a step further and banned local governments from protecting any class not explicitly listed in state law. These recent legislative changes explicitly targeted trans people for discrimination, but will also have the broader effect of preempting local governments from adopting any expanded civil rights protections in the future, including local versions of the CROWN Act.

In the meantime, discrimination has not stopped and continues to have a measurable impact on Black, brown, and women workers—especially related to opportunities for securing a job and workplace advancement. New research finds that 59% of white adults hold anti-Black prejudice, contributing to a greater likelihood that Black applicants are rejected from jobs compared with their white counterparts. Women are paid 18.6% less than men. The disparity increases when considering race: Black women are paid 68.3% and Hispanic women are paid 64.5% of white men’s pay.

It is imperative to both expand protections like the CROWN Act at the local, state, and federal levels and strengthen state civil rights enforcement, while working toward eventual restoration of the EEOC’s capacity to carry out its mission to protect against discrimination in the workplace.

The latest SHED survey also shows that the harm caused by the administration’s economic chaos has not affected all people equally. Structural inequities embedded in the U.S. economy and labor market have historically left communities of color disproportionately vulnerable to economic insecurity and poverty, and the Federal Reserve’s survey shows that this trend is continuing. While the overall financial well-being of most adults held steady in 2025, the financial well-being of Black adults declined. These individuals were also more likely to experience layoffs, leaving a higher share of Black adults and their families with increased fear of finding or keeping a job in 2025. The added employment uncertainty of Black adults also left them significantly more likely to report major concerns about making ends meet. The survey also shows that education largely failed to protect these individuals from the experience of increased economic fragility.

Black adults find themselves in the worst financial position in nearly a decade

In 2025, Black adults were most likely to report a decline in their financial standing. The share of Black adults “doing okay” or “living comfortably” declined by almost 5 percentage points last year to 60% (see Figure A). This is the lowest figure the Survey of Household Economic and Decisionmaking survey has recorded since 2015. The 2025 figure also reflects a steep decline from the high of 2023, when nearly 68% of Black adults answered questions about their financial well-being positively. We find that the bulk of the decline last year took place among the individuals who reported “living comfortably,” as this share declined from 23% in 2024 to 19.0%.

Figure A

Higher education largely failed to protect Black individuals from added financial insecurity under the Trump-Vance economy. While nearly all Black adults with varying levels of education experienced a deterioration of their financial position last year, the situation of adults with a college education worsened the most (see Figure B). The share of these individuals doing okay or living comfortably, for example, declined by nearly 7 percentage points last year.

Figure B

Black adults were more likely to experience a sharp increase in layoffs last year

By summer 2025, job growth had slowed considerably, and Black workers were among the first to experience this slowdown with a rising rate of unemployment. The uneven impact of these debilitating forces last year comes across clearly in the Federal Reserve survey. The share of Black adults who reported experiencing a job loss increased by about 3 percentage points between 2024 and 2025 (see Figure C). This reflects the largest increase among all racial and ethnic groups. In fact, Black adults were more than twice as likely as their white, non-Hispanic peers to report layoffs last year. This reality aligns with the broader labor market position of Black workers, who experienced a steeper rise in their unemployment rate in 2025 and who remained about twice as likely as their white peers to be unemployed. 

Figure C

As the pace of job growth slowed and the unemployment rate rose in the first year of the Trump-Vance administration, people’s concern with finding or keeping a job increased. But this increased employment vulnerability and insecurity fell most heavily on Black individuals and their families (see Figure D). More than half of Black adults said that finding or keeping a job was either a minor or major concern for them or their families last year. This figure increased by nearly 10 percentage points between 2024 and 2025. In fact, Black adults of all education levels reported increased concerns about finding or keeping a job last year. 

Figure D

Black adults and their families have grown increasingly more concerned about their economic security

The added employment vulnerability, combined with the impact of the ongoing affordability crisis, has also left more Black individuals and their families worried about their ability to make ends meet. More than 3 out of 4 (77.5%) Black adults reported that making ends meet was at least a minor concern for them and their families last year (see Figure E). This figure increased by about 8 percentage points between 2024 and 2025, leaving Black adults of all education levels more economically vulnerable last year. In contrast, the share of white, non-Hispanic adults who reported similar concerns declined marginally during the same period.

Figure E

We cannot address the affordability crisis without dealing with its root causes

The Federal Reserve survey points to the relationship between employment, economic security, and well-being. The uneven impact of the weaker job market last year resulted in increased employment and economic uncertainty for Black adults and their families. The survey findings are a reminder that ongoing discussions about the affordability crisis shouldn’t ignore the role of employment, wages, and income. Affordability remains an outcome of a race between income and prices, and we know that the pace of job and wage growth is a policy choice. While there is no silver bullet, we know that a broad basket of policies is needed, including a higher wage floor, increased union density, and macroeconomic policies that reduce inequality.

At a time when families across the country are struggling to afford housing, health care, and education, the Trump administration and its allies in Congress have been cutting support for basic needs and diverting huge sums of money to deportations.

In Minnesota, $4.4 billion in federal taxpayer dollars is being spent on detaining immigrants—many of whom are in the country lawfully—and even some U.S. citizens. That means, on average, every household in the state is paying roughly $2,000 to track down, intimidate, detain, or deport people.

If that money were spent instead on programs proven to improve the lives of working families—education, health care, living wages—it could improve Minnesota communities dramatically. Here are a few different ways the money could be spent over the remaining 2.5 years of the Trump administration:

• Schools across the state are being forced to cut staff and increase class size. With the money being spent on mass deportations, the state could hire 14,000 more full-time school teachers. This would mean, for example:
  • 1,100 more teachers in Minneapolis
  • 340 more teachers in Minnetonka
  • 215 more teachers in Bloomington
  • 140 more teachers in Duluth
• With the cuts to the Affordable Care Act, over 140,000 people in Minnesota are projected to lose their health insurance. Due to cuts in Medicaid funding, hospitals are at risk of closing down in Austin, Staples, Mahnomen, Baudette, Little Falls, Hibbing, and Minneapolis. With the money being spent on deportations, we could keep 129,000 people on health insurance, which would also help keep hospitals open.
• Over 400,000 Minnesotans rely on food stamps, primarily working families with children and elderly people on fixed incomes. But because of cuts in the 2025 Republican tax and spending megabill (the OBBBA), 45,000 people across the state are at risk of being cut off. With the money being spent on deportations, Minnesota could protect food stamps for all hungry families in the state.
• Last year, over 600 Veterans Administration positions were cut in Minnesota. With the funds being diverted to deportations, we could reverse all these cuts and guarantee Minnesota veterans the care they deserve.
• Or, instead of restoring any of these services, every household in Minnesota could be given a $2,000 tax refund.

EPI and others have documented the economic harms of a draconian immigration policy and enforcement on immigrants and their families, as well as U.S.-born workers and the economy as a whole. Any of the alternatives listed above would be a better use of taxpayer dollars for improving the welfare of everyday Minnesotans. It is critical that we take into account the missed opportunities of funding a mass deportation regime, including the badly needed services being ignored or cut off to keep this policy funded and to keep immigrants living in fear.

The bill includes a combined $71.9 million cut for the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Further, the measure implements a 3% cut to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). While the legislation slightly increases funding for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that the Trump administration has weaponized for political reasons, the amount overall remains insufficient. The appropriations measure now moves to the Senate, where the budget cuts face an uncertain future.

If enacted, these reductions would further strain these agencies that have faced over a decade of flat funding that hasn’t accounted for inflation or rising labor force participation (see Figure A). This chronic underfunding has severely impacted their ability to enforce worker protection laws.

Figure A

The consequences of underfunding worker protection agencies

The Department of Labor serves the nation’s workers by administering and enforcing most federal worker protection laws, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Family and Medical Leave Act. Within this framework, WHD ensures that workers receive wages earned while OHSA evaluates safe workplace conditions and standards. Moreover, independent agencies such as the EEOC enforce a range of anti-discrimination laws while the NLRB enforces private-sector labor law, including workers’ rights to a union and collective bargaining. Together, these government agencies are designed to equip workers with the tools to combat workplace abuses and rectify unequal bargaining power. However, enforcement agencies are unable to fulfill their mandates with reduced staffing and resources.

Since 1992, OSHA has experienced a 16.0% decrease in inspectors. OSHA has been left with so few resources that it would take 191 years for its inspectors to visit every workplace under its coverage just once. Furthermore, a recent Government Accountability Office report flagged critical agency shortcomings, noting OSHA’s weak efforts to address the rising tide of workplace violence against health care and social service workers.

WHD has faced similar staffing challenges. The number of WHD investigators is at its lowest point since at least 1973, despite being tasked with protecting many more workers. As a result, the total number of resolved WHD investigations has dropped significantly over the past few years (see Figure B).

Figure B

Meanwhile, the EEOC has experienced an uptick in discrimination claims over the decades alongside rising labor force participation, yet its resources have not matched the pace of these shifts. For the NLRB, funding for the agency has remained flat except for a recent $6 million reduction in case-handling. The lack of funding has severely impacted field offices—the primary point of contact for union elections—with six closing between 2014 to 2025. In 2024, the NLRB released a statement describing their struggle to meet responsibilities such as conducting hearings and elections amid funding and staffing shortages. The consequence of these challenges is evident. Although favorability for unions nears a record high, major efforts to undermine worker organizing persist.

House budget cuts would leave workers more vulnerable to exploitation

If enacted, the House’s budget cuts would exacerbate an already precarious workplace reality. There were 5,070 fatal work injuries in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (see Figure C). Put another way, a worker died every 104 minutes from a work-related injury. Foreign-born Latinx workers were disproportionately impacted. Reducing OSHA funding and staffing will make it even harder to ensure preventable deaths do not occur.

Figure C

Additionally, amid eroding worker protections, workers have had billions of dollars of wages stolen each year. Undocumented workers are especially impacted, with many fearing to report violations especially amid the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies.

Furthermore, workers continue to face discrimination, filing an average of 83,000 charges per year since 1997. Political attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion have only eroded the mechanisms designed to address these injustices.

The House budget proposal claims to champion efficiency, but true efficiency cannot be achieved by dismantling an already vulnerable labor protection ecosystem or by slashing public-sector resources. The chronic underfunding of worker protection agencies turns legally guaranteed protections into hollow promises and leaves workers exposed to unchecked exploitation and vulnerability. A budget that truly supports U.S. workers would pass robust funding for staffing, investigators, and programs that guarantee safety, fairness, and justice across every workplace.

Investment in public education was one of the key reasons the U.S. became the richest country in the world in the 20th century. Universal education has many positive effects, including creating a more productive workforce and a more informed and engaged democratic society. Unions play a key role in advocating for public spending in education. Figure A shows that states with higher unionization rates spend substantially more per student on education.

Figure A

Adequate levels of per-pupil spending are instrumental policy for maintaining quality education. When per-pupil spending is low, students may struggle to get the support they need to achieve their learning goals. Districts, in turn, may have a harder time retaining teachers and staff because they can’t offer competitive salaries or benefits.

Increased per-pupil funding, by contrast, pays off for students. Greater funding for schools improves educational attainment, student achievement, and economic outcomes in adulthood. In one study, researchers found that a 10% increase in school spending for 12 years led to increases in high school graduation rates, 7% higher wages, and 10% higher family incomes in adulthood for children from districts that experienced the spending increase. More recently, researchers assessing the contribution of federal pandemic educational aid found that each $1,000 increase in per-pupil spending boosted student achievement in math and reading. Importantly, when researchers restricted their assessment to high-poverty districts, the per-dollar effect was nearly twice as large.

Unions are also instrumental to protecting quality public education. This is increasingly under threat due to state- and national-level voucher programs, which divert money away from public education and toward private schools and homeschooling. A substantial share of enrollees in voucher programs are often students who are already attending private school.

Vouchers reduce education quality in several ways. First, voucher programs yield worse academic achievement outcomes relative to public schools. Studies have found that students in voucher program schools experienced test score declines that are comparable or worse than declines due to COVID-19.

Second, voucher programs strain state budgets. And this cost comes at a time when states face budgetary pressure from the Republican tax and spending megabill (OBBBA), which reduced federal funding for Medicaid and SNAP (also known as food stamps).

Third, public school districts experience an additional hidden cost. When students leave public schools with a voucher, school districts lose revenue but must still pay the same amount for fixed costs that can’t immediately adjust to declines in enrollment, such as cooling/heating and utilities. These required payments for a district’s fixed costs mean that districts will have even less to spend on costs that can be adjusted—like school supplies or instructional support—thereby reducing services for students.

States with higher levels of unionization are more likely to have the political resources to fight back against vouchers in legislative fights. As a result, these states are less likely to have universal voucher programs, as shown in Figure B.

Figure B

In sum, there are many ways unions support workers and their communities, and their consistent support of public education shouldn’t be discounted. From advocating for enough funding for high-quality education to defending against education privatization, unions support our nation’s commitment to universal public education. This not only improves students’ academic achievement, but also their economic outcomes well into adulthood.

Paraprofessionals—who work under the supervision of licensed teachers to provide focused instructional and behavioral support to students—provide crucial services and play a critical role in educating students with disabilities. Research has demonstrated that paraprofessional educators are key contributors to effective schools.

Despite this, the current pay of paraprofessionals is too low, and clear labor shortages of paraprofessionals have developed in public schools around the country—including in New York City. Paraprofessionals working for the New York City Department of Education have annual earnings ranging from $33,000 to $54,000. EPI’s Family Budget Calculator shows that a single adult with no children in New York City needs to earn $83,262 to afford a modest but adequate standard of living. An additional $10,000 would move those salaries closer to—but still well short of—a living wage. 

One clear sign that the city could benefit from greater public investment in paraprofessionals is the fact that New York City now spends more than $1.5 billion each year on special education due process cases. These costs arise when families successfully demonstrate that the public school system has failed to provide the services required under federal law, requiring the city to cover the cost of remedies such as private school enrollment (the most well-known subset of these are often referred to as “Carter cases”).

Boosting pay by $10,000 for the roughly 25,000 full-time paraprofessionals is estimated to cost the city about $244 million in 2027, roughly 15% of what the city spends on special education due process cases. While no single policy will eliminate these due process case costs, investing in the workforce that delivers crucial special education services can certainly strengthen recruitment and retention and increase the share of families of children with disabilities who are satisfied with the quality of education and support that is being provided in public schools. In turn, more families of special education students choosing to remain in public schools will reduce expenditures on due process cases, helping defray the cost of paying paraprofessionals closer to a living wage.

Finally, we should note that while the state and city of New York would benefit greatly from increased investment in the public sector, this investment obviously requires revenue. This revenue should come from those most able to provide it: high-income households and rich corporations. The quality of services provided to the city and state will depend crucially on whether or not policymakers are willing to raise the revenue needed to make these investments.

After years of pushing unsuccessfully to weaken work hours protections for 14–15-year-olds in Ohio, industry groups have partially succeeded with the help of State Senator Tim Schaffer. Just months after a public outcry led Governor Mike DeWine to veto similar child labor rollbacks in 2025, Schaffer revived the attack on child labor laws by sneaking an amendment into a broader bipartisan education bill. An unrelated amendment tacked onto the new law will allow employers to schedule 14–15-year-olds until 9 p.m. during the school year, though (unlike prior versions of the legislation) only on nights not preceding a school day. The change puts Ohio state law in conflict with long-standing federal child labor standards and allows employers to treat young teens more like adults for scheduling purposes, while saving on labor costs. In Ohio, employers can pay youth under 16 the federal minimum wage of $7.25, nearly $4 less than the regular state minimum wage of $11 an hour.

Industry-supported Ohio senator snuck failed child labor rollback into bipartisan bill to force lawmakers’ support

In late 2025, Governor DeWine vetoed a standalone bill that would have extended the number of hours that employers can schedule 14–15-year-olds to work on any night during the school year—in violation of federal law—after advocates from a long list of child health and welfare, education, organized labor, and economic justice organizations publicly urged him to oppose it. In his veto message, DeWine acknowledged that existing work hour guidelines—providing young teens (under 16) opportunities to gain work experience “after school up to 7 p.m.”—have been “in place, across this country, for many years” and have “served us well” and “effectively balanced the importance of 14- and 15-year-old children learning to work, with the importance of them having time to study.”

But DeWine has now approved similar changes as part of a comprehensive, bipartisan education bill that received broad support, including from education and child advocates. State Senator Schaffer’s 11th-hour backdoor move to add previously vetoed child labor legislation to this year’s education bill was a desperate effort to force changes that have otherwise failed to pass muster, even in a Republican-controlled state legislature.

Federal child labor laws reflect decades of research about the harms of overwork

Allowing young teens to work more hours at night opens the door to problems ranging from poor academic outcomes to a greater chance of injury. Studies have consistently shown that intensive work at a young age is associated with poor academic outcomes; longer hours raise the risk of work-related illness and injury; and working later into the night exacerbates sleep deprivation that in turn can interfere with teens’ education and well-being. Allowing employers to schedule young teens to work until 9 p.m. also increases the likelihood of nighttime driving for new drivers (minors can be permitted to drive at age 15.5 in Ohio), an additional risk factor for accidents. Motor vehicle crashes are already the leading cause of death for teens and young adults, who are three times more likely than adults to die in a car accident.

For all these reasons, federal law limits the maximum number of working hours for young teens to three hours per night or 18 hours a week and prohibits work past 7 p.m. during the school year. Because states can legislate above FLSA standards but not below, the new state standards conflict directly with federal law.

The enacted rollback is less harmful than last year’s failed bill but still hurts children and violates federal law

While the bill DeWine vetoed in 2025 would have allowed employers to schedule 14-year-olds to work until 9 p.m. on any night during the school year, the bill he signed on Friday allows employers to schedule 14-year-olds to work until 9 p.m., only on nights not preceding a school day. However, this limitation on working hours during school nights does nothing to change overall concerns: that later and longer working hours during the school year threaten children’s well-being and education. The new state law also conflicts with federal law and will sow confusion. Employers who follow new state guidelines will be at high risk of violating the FLSA (which will continue to apply to most Ohio employers) and incurring fines and other enforcement actions from the U.S. Department of Labor. This is a lesson that employers have already learned the hard way in states like Iowa where the National Restaurant Association, NFIB, and others have pushed for similar child labor law changes that put state standards into conflict with federal law.

The outcome this year in Ohio provides a useful illustration of how corporate interests and dark money groups are conspiring to weaken labor standards in state legislatures across the country. Schaffer has championed multiple legislative efforts to roll back child labor protections in Ohio in coordination with industry groups that benefit from weaker standards and has even sought to erode federal child labor standards through a concurrent resolution calling on Congress to weaken the FLSA to match.

Schaffer has been clear about his intention to benefit employers, working closely with lobby groups like the billionaire-founded right-wing dark-money group Americans for Prosperity and state affiliates of industry lobby groups like the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and National Restaurant Association. These organizations have fought at the state and federal level for unpopular child labor rollbacks, as well as blocking minimum wage increases, paid sick leave, and other policies that improve conditions for workers. Schaffer has received legislative awards or campaign endorsements from all three groups.

By repeatedly proposing—and in this case implementing—rollbacks that conflict with federal law, Ohio lawmakers are chipping away at the already fragile federal floor for workplace protections. Industry campaigns to weaken child labor laws are continuing, and there is a very real risk that federal child labor protections could face similar threats. In light of these threats, states should instead pursue policy options to strengthen standards and ensure that young teens who work can do so without harming themselves in the process.