Millions of American teenagers will clock in at restaurants, retail shops, and amusement parks this summer. But the hours they can legally work, and the overnight shifts they cannot, depend almost entirely on which state they call home. The patchwork of federal and state child labor laws governing when minors can start and stop working creates a confusing landscape for families, and the differences are wider than most parents realize.
Federal law draws a baseline: workers under 16 cannot begin a shift before 7 a.m. or work past 7 p.m. during the school year. Between June 1 and Labor Day, that evening cutoff extends to 9 p.m., a modest concession to longer summer days and the seasonal hiring surge.
But the federal floor is just the starting point. Many states impose tighter restrictions, and a few impose almost none at all. The U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division notes that numerous states go further than federal law on overnight shift restrictions for workers under 18. For parents sending a 15-year-old off to a first job, or a 17-year-old picking up late-night shifts at a diner, the rules that actually apply are the state rules, and they can differ by hours.
Consider Alabama. Workers under 16 cannot work past 7 p.m. during the school year or past 9 p.m. during summer vacation, and they cannot start before 7 a.m. Older teens enrolled in school face their own restriction: they are barred from working after 10 p.m. ahead of a school day, and that rule applies all the way up to age 19. Alabama does, however, allow case-by-case exemptions for 16- and 17-year-olds, a nod to the reality that blanket rules do not fit every situation.
California mirrors the federal baseline for workers under 16, a 7 p.m. cutoff during the school year, pushed to 9 p.m. between June 1 and Labor Day, with no starts before 7 a.m. But the Golden State adds a separate layer for teens aged 16 and 17. On school nights, they face a 10 p.m. cutoff. Before a non-school day, that extends to 12:30 a.m. And no matter the day, they cannot clock in before 5 a.m.
Those rules matter for the thousands of California teens who work in fast-food restaurants, an industry already navigating the fallout from the state's $20 minimum-wage mandate for fast-food workers, which has squeezed both employers and employees.
Massachusetts stands out for the sheer specificity of its restrictions. Workers under 16 can work only between 6:30 a.m. and 7 p.m. during the school year. From July 1 through Labor Day, the window stretches to 9 p.m.
For teens aged 16 and 17, the Bay State requires them to wrap up by 10 p.m. on school nights. If a business stops serving customers at exactly 10 p.m., those workers can stay until 10:15, a 15-minute grace period that reads like the product of a committee negotiation. On nights before a non-school day, the cutoff moves to 11:30 p.m.
Restaurants and racetracks get a carve-out: older teens working in those industries can stay until midnight on non-school nights. The level of granularity, down to the quarter-hour, illustrates just how deeply state legislatures have drilled into the daily schedules of working teenagers.
The broader labor market these teens are entering is competitive but active. Recent data showed weekly jobless claims dropping to 209,000, beating forecasts even as other economic pressures mount. For teens, that means opportunity, but also a thicket of compliance rules their employers must navigate.
Then there is Nevada. The Silver State lists no night-work restrictions for workers of any age under 18. A 15-year-old in Las Vegas faces no state-imposed curfew on when a shift can end, though federal rules still apply to workers under 16. Nevada does cap minors at 8 hours a day and 48 hours a week, but the absence of any overnight prohibition sets it apart from states like Massachusetts that regulate down to the minute.
The contrast is stark. A 17-year-old in Boston must be off the clock by 10 p.m. on a school night. A 17-year-old in Reno faces no state nighttime restriction at all. Same country, same age, radically different rules.
For families, the practical stakes are real. A teen who picks up overnight or late-evening hours during the summer can earn meaningfully more than one locked into a daytime-only schedule. The original headline's reference to a "pay boost" from overnight laws reflects this dynamic: where state rules allow later shifts, teens have access to hours, and sometimes shift differentials, that their peers in stricter states do not.
For employers, the compliance burden is no small thing. A restaurant chain operating in multiple states must track different cutoff times, different seasonal windows, and different age brackets. Getting it wrong can mean penalties. And in industries already under scrutiny for workplace complaints involving unpaid wages and illegal deductions, the margin for error is thin.
The question of whether teens should work, and how much, is not new. But the regulatory maze they face has grown more complex over time. Federal law has not changed its basic framework in years, while states have layered on their own rules, exemptions, and carve-outs. The result is a system that rewards geography over merit. A teenager willing to work hard and show up on time may be rewarded or restricted based solely on which side of a state line she lives on.
That reality is worth keeping in mind as the debate over young workers' readiness continues. Employers have raised concerns about Gen Z employees being let go within months of hiring, citing reliability and workplace readiness. Meanwhile, institutions like Dartmouth are investing tens of millions in internship programs to bridge the gap between school and career. The common thread is clear: early work experience matters, and the rules governing it shape who gets it.
Parents planning their teenager's summer should check their own state's rules, not just the federal baseline. The Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division maintains a state-by-state resource, and it is worth a few minutes of reading before a teen signs on for a schedule that may not be legal.
A country that says it values hard work and self-reliance ought to make it easier for young people to learn both, not harder to figure out when they're allowed to try.