Federal law caps 14- and 15-year-olds at three hours of work on a school day and 18 hours in a school week, and it sets no hour limit at all once a teenager turns 16. Those are floors, not ceilings: where a state rule is stricter, the U.S. Department of Labor says the state rule is the one that applies.
That single sentence resolves most of what families argue about at the kitchen table in the weeks before a first job. The harder questions come after it — whether a permit is needed, which jobs are simply off the table, and how many hours a student can take on before school starts to suffer. Those answers are knowable too, and they come from public data rather than from anyone's opinion about work ethic.
What follows is information, not advice about your particular teenager. Hour rules, permit rules, and enforcement all differ by state, and a school counselor or your state labor department is the right place to confirm the specifics before a shift is scheduled.
What are the federal limits on hours for 14- and 15-year-olds?
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 14 is the general minimum age for non-agricultural work, and 14- and 15-year-olds may only work outside school hours. The Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division sets four hour limits and one time-of-day window, and all of them apply at once.
| Situation | Federal limit for ages 14-15 |
|---|---|
| School day, including Friday | 3 hours |
| Week when school is in session | 18 hours |
| Non-school day | 8 hours |
| Week when school is not in session | 40 hours |
| Time of day | 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., extended to 9 p.m. between June 1 and Labor Day |
The summer extension is the detail most families miss. A 15-year-old who could not be scheduled past 7 p.m. in May can legally close a shift at 9 p.m. in July under federal rules, according to the Labor Department's child labor fact sheet for non-agricultural jobs. The evening window snaps back after Labor Day, which is worth flagging to an employer before the fall schedule is written.
Do the rules change once a teenager turns 16?
They change a great deal. Federal law places no restriction on the number of hours a 16- or 17-year-old may work, or on the time of day. The Labor Department states that minors 16 and 17 "may be employed for unlimited hours in any occupation other than those declared hazardous."
That surprises parents who assume a school-night curfew is written into federal law somewhere. It is not. The only federal brake on a 17-year-old's schedule is the list of prohibited jobs, not the clock.
In practice, though, a 16-year-old's hours are often limited anyway — by state law rather than federal law. That makes the next question the one that actually governs your household.
Which rule applies when state law says something different?
The stricter rule wins. The Labor Department's guidance on state child labor standards puts it plainly: where a state law is less restrictive than the federal law, federal law applies; where the state law is more restrictive, the state law applies. There is no averaging and no employer discretion in the matter.
Because of that, a family in a state with an 8 p.m. school-night cutoff for 16-year-olds is governed by 8 p.m., even though federal law would allow a later shift. The department maintains a state-by-state table of maximum daily and weekly hours and nightwork prohibitions, current as of July 15, 2025, and it says explicitly that it does not administer state laws — families should consult their own state's labor department for current details.
This is also the layer that changes most often. If you are reading a summary written more than a year ago, check it against your state agency before you rely on it.
Does a teenager need a work permit?
In many states, yes, and the school is usually the office that issues it. California, for example, requires that "all minors under 18 years of age employed in the state of California must have a permit to work," with limited exceptions, according to the state's Division of Labor Standards Enforcement.
The California process is a useful model for how these systems generally run. The student and the employer complete a Statement of Intent to Employ Minor and Request for Work Permit, a parent or guardian signs it, and an authorized person at the student's school issues the permit during the school year. Over summer and school breaks, the district superintendent handles it.
Permit rules are entirely a state matter, so the form, the issuing office, and even whether a permit exists at all vary. The practical takeaway is that the counseling office at your teenager's school is often the fastest place to start, not the employer.
How many hours is too many for a student?
Research points at roughly 20 hours a week as the dividing line, with an important caveat about how firm that number is. In its report Protecting Youth at Work, the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine concluded in 1998 that "employment that is limited in intensity (generally defined as 20 hours per week or less) during high school has been found to promote post-secondary educational attainment."
Above that level, the same report found the pattern reverses. High-intensity work is associated with decreased eventual educational attainment, and, in the report's words, "the more hours worked during the sophomore year, the greater the likelihood of dropping out of school."
The report's authors were candid that the threshold is a convention rather than a finding. "The 20 hour-per-week dividing point is not based on research results," they wrote; "rather, most researchers have adopted that number as a reasonable marker." Read it as a place to start a conversation about a schedule, not as a line that predicts what will happen to any individual student.
One translation worth holding onto: 18 hours — the federal school-week cap for a 15-year-old — already sits just under that marker. A 16-year-old, with no federal cap at all, can pass it in three shifts.
What jobs are off limits, and how often do young workers get hurt?
Seventeen Hazardous Occupations Orders bar all minors under 18 from work involving explosives, driving on the job, mining, logging, roofing, demolition, trenching, meat processing, balers and compactors, and several categories of power-driven machinery, among others. That list is federal, and it does not relax at 17.
The injury data explains why the list exists. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health estimates 26,900 emergency department-treated injuries among 15- to 17-year-olds in 2022, and records 19 work-related deaths of youth under 18 that year, six of them among youth under 16. In 2020, workers aged 18 to 24 were injured at a rate of 2.3 per 100 full-time equivalents, against 1.5 for workers aged 25 to 34.
Asking an employer to walk through the actual tasks of a job, rather than its title, is the step that turns that list into something usable.
How many teenagers are actually working?
About 21.1 million people aged 16 to 24 were employed in July 2025, or 53.1 percent of that age group, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on August 21, 2025. That was down from 54.5 percent a year earlier, and youth unemployment stood at 10.8 percent, up from 9.8 percent in July 2024.
The seasonal swing is large. Employment among 16- to 24-year-olds rose by 1.2 million, or 6.2 percent, between April and July 2025. For a family, that means summer hiring is genuinely a window, and it closes.
What can you do before the first shift?
Three concrete steps, all of them drawn from the sources above, and none of them requiring a lawyer.
- Look up your state's hour and nightwork limits, and treat whichever standard is stricter as the real one — that is how the Labor Department says the two interact.
- Ask the school counseling office whether a work permit is required and who signs it, before the employer sets a schedule.
- Ask the employer which tasks the job actually involves, and check them against the federal hazardous occupations list. The answer for anyone under 18 does not change at 16 or 17.
Then set an hours number together, in advance, with the 20-hour marker as context rather than as a verdict. The 1998 National Academies review found that a limited work schedule can support later educational attainment, which is a reasonable thing for a student to hear. The goal is not to keep a teenager out of a job. It is to keep the job the right size.
For a related business news perspective, read What Parents Should Know About Teen Work-Hour Rules.