Industry groups find a back door to weakening child labor protections in Ohio, after years of bipartisan opposition: States must continue to resist coordinated, industry-backed attacks
Child labor protections have existed for nearly a century but have come under attack in recent years. In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) set guidelines for the hours and nonhazardous jobs for which employers could hire children under 16, guidelines that have for decades helped ensure that young teens could enter the workforce without jeopardizing their health or education. Where state standards are weaker than those provided in FLSA, federal law preempts the state standard, preventing states from undercutting protections for the youngest workers. But for the past several years, a constellation of business interests and right-wing groups have been proposing or enacting state child labor legislation—in Ohio, among other states—that conflicts with the FLSA with the eventual goal of eroding federal standards.
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.
Medicaid and SNAP cuts will harm students and local economies
It has been a year since President Trump signed the 2025 Republican tax and spending megabill (the OBBBA) into law. The bill is guaranteed to lead to some of the largest short-run increases in inequality in American history. It included large tax cuts tilted toward higher-income households and spending cuts tilted against low-income households. The main targets for spending cuts were Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, often referred to as foods stamps). The Congressional Budget Office projects the OBBBA will reduce Medicaid enrollment by 7.5 million people, cut Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion, cut SNAP by $186 billion, and will require states to pay for a portion of the SNAP program. These large cuts will have far-reaching implications for low-income families.
Defenders of the OBBBA cuts claim that, because a large share of these cuts result from introducing new bureaucracy around work-reporting requirements for “able-bodied adults without dependents” (ABAWDs), they will not fall on more vulnerable populations like children or retirees. This is not true. The OBBBA has many near-direct cuts to vulnerable populations’ participation in these programs. More importantly, these cuts will have large spillover effects through families and communities that will harm vulnerable populations—including children.
This post highlights how important Medicaid and SNAP spending is to children, with a particular focus on how these programs support public education. It then outlines some ways that the legislated cuts in the OBBBA will damage this support, either directly or through clear spillover effects through damage to local economies.
Arkansas county’s ARPA troubles are the exception that proves the rule: Fiscal relief funds provided to state and local governments during the pandemic were a wise investment
Over the weekend, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ran a deeply reported analysis of Pulaski County’s use of the $76 million it received in fiscal recovery funds under the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). This legislation, among many other things, gave $350 billion to state and local governments to fight the pandemic and deal with the economic fallout, averting a prolonged recession. The paper found the county—which is the largest in Arkansas and includes the state capitol of Little Rock—failed to document how it spent the funds, and that lack of documentation raises questions about whether the use of funds were in line with ARPA’s rules. By contrast, thousands of cities and counties used ARPA funds to bolster economic recovery and improve the lives of working families. The missed opportunity in Pulaski County case is the exception, not the rule, and demonstrates how important federal oversight of the program was.
USMNT team soars, job growth does not
Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on the jobs report released this morning. Read the full thread here.
Immigration enforcement won’t just hurt immigrants—it will follow their classmates into public schools too
Immigration enforcement hurts many aspects of public life, and public schools have not been spared. ICE enforcement campaigns in cities like Washington and Minneapolis have turned public schools into staging grounds for raids: ICE agents are arresting parents and students who are suspected to be undocumented, and spreading fear among immigrant children and their families and school officials. Additionally, anti-immigration advocates are making a play to overturn a landmark Supreme court ruling, Plyler v. Doe, which ruled that states cannot deny students a free public education based on their immigration status.
In the last two years, Republicans in Tennessee have attempted to push legislation that would violate Plyler to set the stage to challenge the court decision (although neither proposal passed). Last year, the state proposed charging undocumented students tuition for public schools, and this year, Tennessee attempted to pass legislation to track the immigration status of all public school students.
The 1982 ruling of Plyler v. Doe is notable because it stated that the harm of not educating undocumented children would be worse for society than providing a basic education to all children in the U.S. The ruling recognized the huge positive spillovers public education has on the U.S. labor market, public health, and civil society and that leaving immigrant children out of public education would create an “underclass” in U.S. society.
Moreover, if the move to deny public education to children in the U.S. is successful, particularly in pockets of the country where immigrant children are a substantial share of the student population, it will lead to an extraordinarily high cost for the students who remain in public school.
Seventeen states and localities are increasing their minimum wage this July
On July 1, the minimum wage will increase in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, D.C.—lifting wages for more than 361,000 workers and collectively raising their earnings by more than $221 million (see Figure A). In addition to these two states and D.C., 14 cities and counties are also increasing their minimum wage this summer, including Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
Trump’s war in Iran has wiped out 1.5 years of wage growth
The Trump administration’s decision to start a war with Iran has imposed disastrous costs—both economic and humanitarian—around the world. The U.S. has been more insulated from these costs than most other countries, yet even here they are extremely large. The war’s effect in pushing up U.S. energy prices has erased all the real (inflation-adjusted) wage gains workers have made during his second term.
According to today’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) release, overall inflation was 4.2% over the last year. The sudden burst in inflation, along with slowing nominal wage growth, means that the average hourly real wage for private-sector workers is now no higher than it was in January 2025.
So far, excessive inflation has been limited to energy and airfares. But as long as the war continues, there is a heightened threat that price increases will spill over to the broader economy, triggering a more permanent increase in the cost of living and further reductions in real earnings.
U.S. House could soon pass legislation making it easier for workers to secure a first union contract
Update: The U.S. House passed the Faster Labor Contracts Act on June 9.
Over the last five years, workers have won unions in several high-profile campaigns, including Amazon workers in Staten Island and Starbucks workers in Buffalo. These examples are a testament to workers’ determination and desire for greater agency in their workplace. But these Amazon and Starbucks workers have yet to reach a first contract with their employer, illustrating the issues many workers face when they win a union and begin collectively bargaining. Far too often, employers refuse to bargain in good faith with workers, significantly delaying a first contract. Currently, on average, it takes workers 465 days to bargain a first contract.
Today, the U.S. House of Representatives will likely consider legislation aimed at ensuring workers can reach a first contract without unnecessary delay. The Faster Labor Contracts Act establishes a timeline from bargaining to mediations and, if necessary, binding arbitration. These provisions discourage delay and promote good-faith bargaining, which is exactly how the law should work.
Corporate mergers and acquisitions are an example of how quickly employers can reach a deal when they want to: these complicated, multibillion-dollar deals can often be reached in a matter of weeks. When these corporate deals take longer, it is often due to government regulators challenging the legality of the corporate merger—not corporate conduct.
May job growth was stronger than expected, but slowing wage growth exacerbates affordability concerns
Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 172,000 jobs added in May. Read the full thread here.
State lawmakers continued to weaken child labor protections in 2026: Efforts to strengthen protections have stalled
Key takeaways:
- So far this year, at least 13 states have introduced bills weakening child labor protections, and four have enacted them.
- Meanwhile, only three states have introduced bills to strengthen standards in 2026, compared with 15 in 2025.
- Industry-backed attacks on child labor standards have followed four troubling trends: 1) lowering minimum wages for teen workers; 2) weaponizing “youth apprenticeships”; 3) eliminating youth permits; and 4) weakening safeguards for teen child care workers.
- The Trump administration has undermined federal enforcement of child labor standards, even amid rising violations.
- Oregon enshrined current federal child labor standards into state law, offering a replicable model for states to hold the line against potential federal rollbacks.
Many state lawmakers took encouraging steps in 2023 and 2024 to strengthen their child labor standards—in response to high-profile reporting of widespread child labor violations across the U.S. and simultaneous efforts to weaken state child labor standards in the wake of COVID-19. But trends in 2026 suggest that this momentum may be waning despite continued increases in child labor violations. Meanwhile, opponents of strong child labor standards have continued to erode state standards and—in effect—chip away at the basis for federal standards, which have also come under threat.Read more