As the Trump administration weakens federal worker protections, a new Economic Policy Institute series of policy briefs identifies how state lawmakers can step in to maintain and strengthen safeguards for workers.

Most recently, the Trump administration has moved to dismantle key workplace protections and standards that set a national floor for minimum wages and overtime pay, nondiscrimination, child labor, and worker health and safety. These attacks run parallel to industry-backed attempts to weaken state labor standards while building pressure to erode federal standards for the whole country.

At a minimum, states must be equipped to maintain and enforce basic protections if at-risk federal standards disappear, but lawmakers can and should go further. The first installment in this new series of policy briefs shows how state policymakers can boost minimum wage standards, protect and expand overtime pay coverage, strengthen child labor standards, and improve wage payment standards to prevent wage theft.

“Right now, workers can’t depend on the federal government to protect their basic rights at work. This crisis leaves states with urgent obligations to shore up basic labor standards—and also presents state lawmakers with big opportunities to address longstanding gaps and exclusions in outdated labor laws and address major economic challenges like growing income inequality, racial and gender wage gaps, and declining job quality,” said Jennifer Sherer, Deputy Director of EPI’s Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN).