Hiring a Minor Into a Trade: What the Hours Rules Allow

Why this matters

The trades recruit young, and a shop that takes on the owner's nephew for the summer is doing something regulated whether or not anyone thinks of it that way. Most owners worry about the wrong half. They ask how many hours a sixteen-year-old can work, which at the federal layer is not restricted at all, and never whether the kid is allowed on the roof, in the trench, or on the lift, which is where the rules actually bite and where a violation is priced per minor.

This is orientation, not legal advice on your own situation. A genuinely useful youth job in a trade shop is entirely lawful, and building one takes about an hour of thinking once.

Three age bands, and only one of them can be on the job site

The federal rules are 29 U.S.C. 212 and 29 CFR Part 570, and they sort by age before anything else.

Under 14. Generally cannot be employed in non-agricultural work at all. The exceptions are narrow: newspaper delivery, performing, and work for a business owned solely by the parents, which is still barred from manufacturing, mining and any hazardous occupation.

14 and 15. Employable only in the occupations affirmatively permitted at 29 CFR 570.34, which is a list of retail, food service and office and clerical work. The companion prohibition at 570.33 rules out construction and building-trades work, including repair and maintenance, along with transportation, warehousing and public utilities. The practical translation for a service shop is blunt: a fourteen-year-old can answer the phone, file, stock shelves and sweep the shop floor, and cannot ride the van as a helper or do trade work at a customer's property.

16 and 17. May do any non-agricultural work that is not declared hazardous, with no federal limit on hours, nights or days. From here the federal constraint is entirely the hazardous occupations orders.

The hours rules, which are the part everyone asks about

Federal hours limits apply to 14- and 15-year-olds only, at 29 CFR 570.35: work outside school hours only, no more than 3 hours on a school day and 18 hours in a school week, no more than 8 hours on a non-school day and 40 hours in a non-school week, and only between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., except from June 1 through Labor Day when the evening end moves to 9 p.m.

For 16- and 17-year-olds the federal layer is silent on hours, and the state layer is where the rule lives. Many states cap daily and weekly hours for this band during the school year, restrict how late they may work before a school day, and require a break after a set number of consecutive hours. Where federal and state rules cover the same ground, the stricter one governs. In practice you comply with your state's hours table and the federal hazardous list at the same time, not one or the other.

The hazardous occupations orders, which are what actually blocks the work

There are seventeen of these, in 29 CFR Part 570 Subpart E, and they prohibit the listed work outright for anyone under 18. Supervision does not cure them. Nor does a signed parental permission slip. The ones a field-service shop will hit:

The order numbers are what DOL's own materials key on and what a crew lead can look up; the text sits in 29 CFR Part 570 Subpart E. Read the section for the order you rely on: this table is a router, not the rule.

Three of these surprise people every time. HO 16 is written as work on or about a roof, so the gutter run from a ladder at roof level and the ground work supporting a roofing operation are inside it, not outside. HO 7 covers the lift as well as the forklift, so the sixteen-year-old cannot ride a scissor lift up to hand tools to someone, exactly the task a shop invents for a helper. And HO 15 carries no apprentice or student-learner exemption at all, so tear-out is closed to every minor on the payroll, registered apprentice included.

Note what is not on the list. Hand tools are not restricted, and neither are cordless drills, drivers and screw guns. Do not generalize from that to portable tools at large: HO 5 and HO 14 both reach portable machines, so a portable router, biscuit joiner, planer or jointer is a power-driven woodworking machine, and a portable circular or reciprocating saw is named in HO 14 outright. The work itself is the clear part. Carrying, staging, cleaning, stocking, running a shop-vac and prepping are all lawful for a 16- or 17-year-old, and that is most of what a helper is for.

The two exemptions, and exactly what they require

Registered apprentices and student-learners may perform work otherwise barred by HO 5, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 and 17, under conditions set at 29 CFR 570.50. Read that list again for what it does not include: HO 2, HO 7 and HO 15 have no such exemption, so no minor drives outside the narrow 17-year-old allowance, no minor operates a lift or a forklift, and no minor does wrecking or demolition, apprentice or not.

The apprentice exemption requires employment under a written apprenticeship agreement registered with DOL's Office of Apprenticeship or a recognized State Apprenticeship Agency, with the otherwise-prohibited work incidental to the training, intermittent and for short periods, and under the direct and close supervision of a journeyworker. A shop that calls a kid an apprentice internally has none of this; the registration is the thing.

The student-learner exemption requires enrollment in a cooperative vocational training program run by a recognized educational authority, the same incidental-intermittent-supervised conditions, school safety instruction correlated with the on-the-job training, a written schedule of progressive work processes, and a written agreement signed by the employer and the school coordinator or principal, both keeping a copy. If you cannot produce that agreement on request, you do not have the exemption.

Work permits and the certificate of age

Federal law does not require a work permit. Many states do, typically issued by the minor's school district, often requiring a parent signature and a job description from the employer, and several states restrict what the permit may authorize. Separately, a certificate of age protects the employer, and the protection runs from that document specifically: an unexpired certificate of age issued under 29 CFR Part 570, or a state employment or age certificate that WHD accepts in its place under 29 CFR 570.9. A photocopied license, a birth certificate in the drawer or a parent's word is proof of age, and none of them is the shield. Get the real document before the first shift, not after the inspector asks.

Worked example: building a lawful summer job for a seventeen-year-old

A six-person remodeling shop wants a helper for ten weeks over the summer: 8-hour days, five days, 40 hours.

Hours. He is 17, so no federal hours limit applies, and the state table for this band is checked anyway. School is out, so its school-night restriction is dormant for the ten weeks. It matters in week eleven: keep him part-time into September and that cap becomes live, and the schedule has to be rebuilt. That is the step shops forget.

Task list, built by subtraction. Out: any roof, including carrying bundles up and handing tools from a ladder at eaves height (HO 16). Out: tear-out on the bathroom remodel (HO 15). Out: the reciprocating saw and the circular saw for demo and framing cuts, and the cutoff wheel (HO 14). Out: the miter saw in the shop (HO 5). Out: the scissor lift on the commercial job (HO 7). In: material staging, carrying and loading, site cleanup, the shop-vac, cordless drill and driver work, holding and measuring, stocking the truck, and riding along as a passenger.

Driving. HO 2 bars it. The exemption at 29 CFR 570.52 is narrow, and two of its conditions settle the question before any arithmetic starts. The 17-year-old must have successfully completed a state-approved driver education course: no course, no exemption, whatever the percentages say. And the vehicle must not exceed 6,000 pounds gross vehicle weight, which is what ends this in most shops, because a contractor's work van routinely sits above it. Read the GVWR off the door plate, not the badge on the tailgate.

The rest of 570.52 is a list, and all of it has to hold at once: driving that is occasional and incidental to the job, daylight hours only, inside a 30-mile radius of the place of employment, a valid state license with no records of any moving violations at the time of hire, seat belts for the driver and every passenger with the employer having instructed the employee that they are to be used, no more than three passengers at a time, no towing, no route deliveries, no urgent time-sensitive deliveries, and no transportation for hire of property, goods or passengers. Read 570.52 itself before you hand over keys.

Only once all of that holds do the caps matter: one third of worktime in any workday, 20 percent in any workweek. That is 2 hours 40 minutes of an 8-hour day and 8 hours of a 40-hour week. One supply-house run a day of roughly an hour is 12.5 percent of both, inside with room; a second run on two days takes the week to 17.5 percent, still inside but close enough that one busy day breaks it.

Paperwork on file before day one. The certificate of age, the document described above and not a photocopy of something else. The state work permit if the state requires one. The driver education completion record, if you are relying on the driving exemption. And the task list above, written down and given to whoever runs his crew, because the person who actually hands him a saw is a lead who has never read 29 CFR anything.

Ten weeks of staging, cleanup, stocking and watching, with the trade vocabulary picked up along the way, is a real introduction and a genuine help on site. A shop that decides the rules make youth employment impossible has misread which rules are which.

How to verify you got this right

Read your own task list back and mark each item against the table above. Then take two things to your state labor department or an employment lawyer, before the first shift rather than after: any task you cannot place on the table, and any exemption you intend to claim. Bring the written task list, the certificate of age, the vehicle's GVWR from the door plate, the driver education record, and the signed apprenticeship or school agreement if you are relying on one. That order matters because of how the penalties run: 29 U.S.C. 216(e) sets a separate and much higher civil penalty tier where the violation causes serious injury or death to the minor. Confirm whether your state issues work permits and caps hours during the school year, and diary the date those limits become live. And brief the lead, not just the minor, because the violation happens when a well-meaning journeyman hands over the saw to save a trip.

References

• Fair Labor Standards Act child labor provisions, 29 U.S.C. 212; penalties at 29 U.S.C. 216(e)
• 29 CFR Part 570, including 570.9 (age certificates), 570.33 and 570.34 (permitted and prohibited occupations, ages 14 and 15), 570.35 (hours), and the hazardous occupations orders in Subpart E
• U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, YouthRules guidance on youth employment
• Your state labor department for hours rules for 16- and 17-year-olds, work permits and age certificates, the stricter layer in most states
• See related: Form I-9 and E-Verify Compliance; the workers comp cards in this library, since several states treat an injury to an illegally employed minor differently