Child Labor: Labor Can Strengthen Its Efforts to Protect Children Who Work
Published: 2002-09-27T00:00:00

Fast Facts:

Highlights:
section_title: What GAO Found
paragraphs: In 2001, almost 40 percent of all 16- and 17-year-olds in the United States and many 14- and 15-year-olds worked at some time in the year. Children in the United States are often encouraged to work, and many people believe that children benefit from early work experiences by developing independence, confidence, and responsibility. However, the public also wants to ensure that the work experiences of young people enhance, rather than harm, their future opportunities. The number and characteristics of working children have changed little over the past decade. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, as in 1990, as many as 3.7 million children aged 15 to 17 worked in 2001. The number of children who die each year from work-related injuries has changed little since 1992, but the number of children who incurred nonfatal injuries while working is more difficult to determine because data from different sources provide different estimates of the number of injuries and trends over time. The Department of Labor devotes many resources to ensuring compliance with the child labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, including conducting nationwide campaigns designed to increase public awareness of the provisions, but its compliance efforts suffer from limitations that may prevent adequate enforcement of the law.

section_title: Letter
paragraphs: In 2001, almost 40 percent of all 16- and 17-year-olds in the United States and many 14- and 15-year-olds worked at some time in the year. Children in the United States are often encouraged to work and many people believe that children benefit from early work experiences by developing independence, confidence, and responsibility. However, the public also wants to ensure that the work experiences of young people enhance, rather than harm, their future opportunities. Over 200,000 children are injured on the job each year and about 70 die as a result of their injuries, according to a recent report by the Department of Labor. In addition, while work can have a positive effect on academic achievement, working too many hours may adversely affect children’s educational attainment. To protect children from such harmful effects, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), with provisions on child labor, was enacted in 1938. These provisions established the minimum age at which children can work, limited the number of hours and times of day they can work, and prohibited them from performing work defined as hazardous. It also made the Secretary of Labor responsible for defining work that is too hazardous for children and for enforcing the provisions of the law.
You asked us to update information from our 1991 reports on child laborby providing information on (1) how the number and characteristics of working children in the United States have changed over the past decade, (2) whether the number and characteristics of work-related injuries to children have changed over this same time period, and (3) how well Labor enforces the child labor provisions of FLSA.
To obtain this information, we analyzed data on the characteristics of, and injuries to, children obtained from Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and injury data from the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH); reviewed the child labor provisions of FLSA and its implementing regulations, agency documents, information from Labor’s investigations database, and individual case files; interviewed Labor officials in Washington, D.C., and 11 field offices (5 regions and 6 district offices), officials from NIOSH, and other experts on child labor; and developed estimates of the number of children who are employed illegally by comparing BLS data on working children to the child labor provisions of FLSA. Most of the estimates in the report were calculated using data obtained from samples and, therefore, have sampling errors associated with them. All differences included in the report were tested for statistical significance at the 0.05 level. See app. I for detailed information on our analysis, including its limitations. We conducted our work from September 2001 to August 2002 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
subsections: section_title: Background
paragraphs: Several key sources provide information on the number and characteristics of working children. The Current Population Survey (CPS), compiled monthly by BLS, is the primary source of information on the United States labor force. CPS provides nationally representative information on the number and characteristics of working children age 15 and older, including data on where children work, the types of jobs they hold, and how many hours a week they work. In addition, it provides demographic information on children such as age, race, ethnicity, and family income. Because the data have been collected for over 50 years, they can be used to show how the number and characteristics of working children have changed over time. Labor also compiles two additional sources of nationally representative data on working children. The first is the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). The most recent NLSY began in 1997 and is referred to as “NLSY97”; it contains data on one group of approximately 9,000 children born from 1980 to 1984. NLSY provides detailed information on the work experiences of this group of children over time and captures data not collected in CPS, such as information on children younger than 15 and in-depth information on children’s work habits, education, and personal lives. NLSY, however, cannot be used to show how the number and characteristics of all working children have changed over time because it only includes information on one group of children born from 1980 to 1984. The second set is the National Agricultural Workers Survey in which data are collected several times each year from a sample of crop agricultural workers. This survey provides data on the number and characteristics of children who work in migrant agriculture, their educational attainment, and their mobility. The information can be used to supplement data on children in CPS and NLSY but it is limited. Labor added questions to the survey in fiscal year 2000 to obtain additional data on children who work in agriculture but has not been able to obtain data on a sufficiently large number of children working in crop agriculture to provide information that is statistically reliable.
The primary sources of data on children who are injured or killed as a result of work-related injuries come from BLS and NIOSH. BLS reports all work-related fatalities, including those for children, in its Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries published each year. BLS identifies these fatalities through death certificates and reports from state workers’ compensation agencies, medical examiners, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the news media. BLS collects data on the number of nonfatal work-related injuries and illnesses in its Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses from a sample of the injury records that employers in private industry are required to maintain. NIOSH collects data on work- related injuries in its National Electronic Injury Surveillance System from a sample of emergency room records.
The employment of working children is generally covered by FLSA and its implementing regulations, which limit the types of jobs, number of hours, and times of day that children younger than 16 years of age can work. Generally, most children younger than age 14 are prohibited from working in nonagricultural employment other than casual free-lance jobs such as babysitting and delivering newspapers. Children who are 14 and 15 years old may work in many jobs in retail stores, restaurants, and gas stations. They may not, however, work in any job considered hazardous, including jobs in manufacturing, mining, construction, transportation, warehousing, communications, and public utilities. The provisions also prohibit 14- and 15-year-olds from working during school hours and limit the number of hours and times of day they can work. (See table 1.)
FLSA also authorizes the Secretary of Labor to designate certain types of jobs and equipment as too hazardous for children under the age of 18. Once children reach age 16, they are only prohibited from working in jobs or with equipment covered by these Hazardous Occupations Orders, they are not limited as to the number of hours or times of day they can work. These hazardous jobs and types of equipment are specified in 17 Hazardous Occupations Orders originally issued between 1939 and 1963. (See table 2 for a list of the occupations determined to be hazardous by the Secretary of Labor.) In 2002, NIOSH completed a review of the Hazardous Occupations Orders for Labor. Its report, issued in July 2002, made several recommendations for changes to the orders, including establishing new hazardous orders prohibiting all children younger than age 18 from working in the construction industry and from working at a height of 6 feet or higher on ladders, scaffolds, trees, and other structures.Labor is in the process of reviewing the report and deciding what actions it will take in response to the recommendations.
For jobs in agriculture, the child labor provisions are much less restrictive. Children of any age may work an unlimited number of hours (outside of school hours) in nonhazardous jobs, either on a farm owned by their parents or on a noncommercial farm with the written consent of their parents. Children aged 14 and 15 are allowed to work an unlimited number of hours in nonhazardous jobs outside of school hours without parental consent and, once they reach age 16, they are allowed to work in agricultural jobs deemed hazardous.
The child labor provisions of FLSA do not cover all children. Children who work for employers whose annual gross volume of sales is less than $500,000 and whose work cannot be linked to interstate commerce are not covered under FLSA, although they may be covered under state child labor laws. In addition, children who are self-employed are not subject to the child labor provisions of FLSA. Furthermore, although children who work for their parents are prohibited from working in occupations and operating equipment listed in the Hazardous Occupations Orders, they are not subject to other restrictions of FLSA. When children reach age 18, they are no longer covered under the child labor provisions of FLSA.
In 2001, several legislative proposals were submitted in the House of Representatives and the Senate that would strengthen the child labor provisions of FLSA. The proposals include the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment of 2001, which would, among other things, increase the maximum penalties for child labor violations and prohibit children aged 16 and 17 from working in hazardous occupations in agriculture. The Young American Workers’ Bill of Rights would amend the FLSA to require employers to obtain work permits for all children age 18 and under who are still in school, require Labor and the Census Bureau to compile data on child labor from the states, including data on injuries and illnesses, and add additional restrictions on child labor such as prohibiting children from making door-to-door sales for profit. (See app. II for a list of the legislative proposals introduced in the 107th Congress that would strengthen the child labor provisions of FLSA.)
Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) is responsible for enforcing the child labor provisions of FLSA. WHD’s national office develops the goals and performance measures for Labor’s child labor compliance efforts and reports on the results of its efforts in annual performance plans. The national office is also responsible for providing guidance and training to WHD’s regional and district offices and for assessing the results of their child labor compliance efforts. Much of the responsibility for planning and executing these efforts, however, is left to the discretion of WHD’s five regional offices and the 50 district offices that report directly to the regions. The Child Labor Team Leader in the headquarters office is responsible for coordinating WHD’s child labor compliance efforts, including disseminating information and guidance to the regional and district offices, maintaining the section of the WHD Web site with information on child labor, maintaining the Field Operations Handbook for investigators, and overseeing special projects. WHD’s child labor compliance efforts comprise several strategies: enforcement, partnerships, education and outreach, and public awareness. Its public awareness strategy is designed to inform the general public about the child labor provisions of FLSA through activities such as press releases. WHD’s education and outreach activities—which WHD also refers to as “compliance assistance”—are specifically targeted to groups that can have an impact on youth employment, such as teachers, parents, and employers. Education and outreach activities include publishing and distributing materials such as bookmarks with information on the rules governing the employment of children under age 18, and maintaining a Web site with information on the child labor provisions of FLSA and state child labor laws.
WHD’s enforcement actions include on-site investigations of employers and other activities designed to bring employers into compliance with the law. When WHD finds violations of the child labor provisions of FLSA during its investigations, it may assess penalties. The penalties for child labor violations depend on the severity of the violations, the number of times the violations occurred, and aggravating factors such as falsification of records and whether the employer has a record of previous child labor violations. The penalties range from $275 for a record-keeping violation to $11,000 for a violation involving a serious injury or death. Information on WHD’s investigations, violations, and penalties assessed is tracked in its investigations database–the Wage and Hour Investigative Support and Reporting Database, WHISARD.
section_title: Number and Characteristics of Children Who Work and the Percentage of Illegally Employed Children Have Not Changed Since 1990
paragraphs: Over the past decade, according to data tabulated from CPS, the number and characteristics of working children have not changed. In 2001, working children were as sizable a part of the United States labor force as they were in 1990. Most children worked in a variety of occupations concentrated in a few select industries, primarily retail trade and services. The percentage of children who worked illegally, either because they worked in occupations prohibited under the law or more hours than allowed, also did not change. In 2001, as in 1990, minority children and children from families with annual incomes below $25,000 were more likely than other children to work illegally. However, because of limitations of the data available, we could not determine the full extent and nature of children’s employment in the United States, such as the number and characteristics of children younger than age 15 who work and the percentage of children younger than 15 who are employed illegally.
subsections: section_title: Many Children Work, Primarily in Retail Trade and Services
paragraphs: In 2001, as many as 3.7 million children between the ages of 15 and 17 worked, about 30 percent of all children in this age range. (See fig. 1.) Between 1990 and 2001, children as a proportion of the total United States labor force, as well as the percentage of children who worked, remained relatively stable. The percentage of children who worked in summer months fluctuated over the decade from a high of 36 percent in 1990 to a low of 30 percent in 2001. Although most children work for an employer, in 2001, about 52,000 (2 percent) were self-employed and about 10,000 (less than 1 percent) performed unpaid labor in a family business.
Throughout the decade, children primarily worked in retail trade, in businesses such as department stores, grocery stores, and restaurants. In 2001, as in 1990, about 60 percent of all working children were employed in this industry, mostly in eating and drinking places. (See fig. 2.) Children generally held jobs in sales occupations, such as running a cash register or clerking at a store, or in services, such as waiting tables or cleaning hotel rooms.
Various data sets provide information about children who work in agriculture. According to CPS data tabulated by GAO, about 4 percent of all children who worked were employed in agriculture in 2001. Another data set, the National Agricultural Workers Survey, provides more detailed information on the characteristics of children who work in crop agriculture. According to the data in this survey, the characteristics of children in crop agriculture changed somewhat over the decade. Although most children working in crop agriculture throughout the decade were boys aged 16 and 17, the percentage of boys increased, as did the percentage of children who were foreign-born and newcomers to this country. Although most children working in agriculture are 16 years of age and older, the percentage of younger children (14- and 15-year-olds) who work in agriculture has increased, from 17 percent to 30 percent. In addition, both the percentage of children who entered the country illegally to work in agriculture and the percentage of those who were not accompanied by their parents or other family members rose over the decade.
Children’s work has a decidedly seasonal nature. More children work in summer months when school is out of session than in school months. In 2001, 30 percent of all children aged 15 to 17 worked in summer months, compared to 23 percent who worked in school months. Not only do more children work in the summer, they also work more hours. In 2001, children worked an average of 21 hours a week in summer months, compared to 16 hours a week in school months. This is similar to the number of hours they worked in both summer and school months in 1990. Children also overwhelmingly worked part-time; 87 percent of all working children worked part-time in 2001.
Although children worked about the same number of hours in 2001 as in 1990, their average hourly earnings increased by 10 percent. In 1990, children paid an hourly salary earned an average of $5.70 an hour; in 2001, the average hourly salary was $6.36. From 1990 to 2001, children’s average hourly earnings exceeded the minimum wage and the amount by which their earnings exceeded the minimum wage increased. By 2001, their average hourly earnings exceeded the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour by $1.21.
subsections: section_title: Older Children Are More Likely than Younger Children to Work
paragraphs: The older a child is, the more likely he or she is to work and the more hours he or she is likely to work. These differences are even greater in the summer when more children work. For example, in summer months in 2001, 43 percent of all 17-year-olds and 33 percent of all 16-year-olds worked, while only 15 percent of all 15-year-olds worked. Moreover, in 2001, 17-year-olds worked an average of 23 hours a week in summer months, 5 more hours a week than 15-year-olds and 2 more hours a week than 16-year-olds.
Children of different ages tend to work in different industries. Older children are more likely to work in the retail trade industry than younger children. For example, in summer months in 2001, nearly 60 percent of employed 17-year-olds worked in retail trade, whereas 38 percent of employed 15-year-olds worked in this industry. On the other hand, 15-year-olds are more likely than older children to work in agriculture, possibly because of the looser age restrictions that provide younger children with opportunities for employment in agriculture that they do not have in other industries.
section_title: Poor and Minority Children Are Less Likely to Work
paragraphs: In addition to age, family income and race are also related to children’s employment. Children from families with lower incomes are less likely to work than those from higher income families and minority children are less likely to work than white children. About 17 percent of children in families with annual incomes below $25,000 a year worked in 2001, compared to 29 percent of children in families with incomes above $75,000 a year. In 2001, 15 percent of black children and 17 percent of Hispanic children worked, compared to about 30 percent of white children.
Despite the fact that children from lower income families are less likely to work, when they do work, they tend to work more hours. Children in families with annual incomes below $25,000 worked an average of 21 hours a week in 2001, 5 more hours a week than children whose families had annual incomes of $75,000 or more.
In addition, while all minority children were less likely to work than white children, Hispanic children who were employed worked more hours than other children. In 2001, Hispanic children worked an average of 24 hours a week, at least 5 more hours a week than other children.
section_title: Many Children Are Illegally Employed; Illegal Employment Varies by Age and Gender
paragraphs: As in 1990, we estimated that as many as 4 percent of all 15- to 17-year-olds who worked in 2001 worked illegally, either because they worked more hours than allowed under the law or because they worked in prohibited hazardous occupations. Because the child labor provisions of FLSA for 15-year-olds are more restrictive, they are more likely to work illegally than 16- or 17-year-olds. For example, in 2001, over 21 percent of all employed 15-year-olds worked illegally in school months, compared to 1 percent of all 16- and 17-year-olds. Although the overall percentage of children who worked illegally in both summer months and school months remained constant from 1990 to 2001, the percentage of 15-year-olds who worked illegally in school months increased over the period. (See table 3.)
Most of the children who worked illegally were 15-year-olds who worked more hours than allowed under the child labor provisions of FLSA. Of the 15-year-olds who worked illegally, nearly 80 percent worked an excessive number of hours—on average, 10 hours more than the maximum number of hours allowed. Because of the hours restrictions for 15-year-olds in school months, they were much more likely to work illegally in school months than in summer months.
Children who worked illegally not only worked more than the allowed number of hours, they also worked in prohibited industries and occupations. Although most children worked in the retail trade industry during the past decade, a substantial percentage of the illegal employment was found in other industries (see fig. 3). For example, in 2001, although only 3 percent of all children worked in manufacturing, this industry accounted for 14 percent of all illegally employed children. Similarly, although only 3 percent of all working children worked in construction, the construction industry accounted for 16 percent of all illegally employed children.
Moreover, although most children worked in sales and services occupations, children who were employed in prohibited occupations were most commonly employed illegally in transportation-related occupations. In 2001, according to our estimates, over 40 percent of all children who were employed illegally because they worked in prohibited occupations worked as truck drivers. (See fig. 4.)
We determined that a child’s gender, race, and citizenship status were related to the likelihood that he or she worked in a prohibited occupation, but a child’s annual family income was not related. In 2001, boys were more likely than girls to work in prohibited occupations. In addition, black children were less likely than children of other races to work in prohibited occupations, and children who were not citizens were more likely than those who were citizens to work in prohibited occupations. There was no correlation, however, between family income and children who worked in hazardous occupations. In other words, children from families with lower annual incomes were not more or less likely to work in prohibited occupations than other children.
Although children from families with lower incomes were not more likely to work in prohibited occupations, they were more likely to work more hours than allowed. In school months in 2001, 32 percent of all employed 15-year-olds with family incomes less than $25,000 a year worked more hours than allowed under the law. In contrast, only 9 percent of all employed 15-year-olds with family incomes over $75,000 a year worked more hours than allowed.
In addition to income, race is also associated with the likelihood that a child will work more hours than allowed; Hispanic children are more likely to work too many hours than other children. In 2001, 42 percent of Hispanic 15-year-olds worked more hours than allowed during school months, compared to 16 percent of whites and 18 percent of blacks.
The region of the country in which children live as well as the type of area in which they live (metropolitan or nonmetropolitan) are also associated with illegal employment. A higher proportion of employed 15-year-olds who lived in the South and West worked more hours than allowed than those who lived in the Northeast and Midwest. In school months in 2001, 15-year-olds in the South and West were almost 1.5 times more likely than their counterparts in the Northeast and Midwest to work more hours than allowed. Additionally, 15-year-olds who lived in metropolitan areas were 1.4 times more likely to work more hours than allowed under the law than those who lived in nonmetropolitan areas.
subsections: section_title: Data Limitations Affect Child Labor Estimates
paragraphs: Although data on children who work has been collected in CPS for 50 years, and therefore provides useful information on trends in child labor, limitations of the data affect our ability to accurately describe all children in the United States who work. One limitation is that data on children younger than age 15 are not collected. In 1989, Labor stopped collecting data on 14-year-olds in CPS, although these children are allowed under FLSA and its implementing regulations to work in many jobs.Because CPS does not gather data on 14-year-olds, the estimates presented in this report paint an incomplete picture of the employment patterns for younger children.
Another limitation of CPS is the method used to capture information on working children. While some data are collected directly from children who work, most of the information in CPS on working children is provided by an adult member of the household, in most cases a parent. Because the adult answering the questions may not be aware of the full extent of the child’s activities, information about the child’s employment may be underreported or omitted, or the adult may incorrectly identify the industry, occupation, or hours worked.
Another BLS survey, NLSY, collects information on children differently. In NLSY, children are directly asked by interviewers to describe their jobs as well as their activities at work. Because children are asked directly about their work and are asked more detailed questions about employment throughout the year, including using a calendar to prompt the child to account for each period of employment or unemployment during the year, the percentage of children who work reported in NLSY is much higher than in CPS. For example, NLSY97 showed that about 24 percent of all 15-year-olds worked in a particular week during the summer of 1996,while CPS data showed that 18 percent of 15-year-olds worked in that same period. In addition, NLSY collects data on younger children who work. For example, NLSY97 showed that 13 percent of all 14-year-olds worked for an employer in a particular week during the summer of 1996; CPS does not capture data on 14-year-olds who work. (See table 4.) NLSY97 also reported that as many as 44 percent of all 13-year-olds and 34 percent of all 12-year-olds received income from freelance jobs at some point in 1997.
section_title: Fatalities Have Changed Little; Extent of Change in Other Work-Related Injuries to Children Is Unclear
paragraphs: The number and characteristics of children who die each year as a result of a work-related injury have changed little over the past decade. From 1992 to 2000, the number of fatalities and the fatality rates for working children remained fairly constant. It is difficult, however, to determine whether the number of work-related injuries to children has changed, because the two primary sources of data on nonfatal injuries to working children—BLS and NIOSH—provide significantly different estimates of the number of children injured over the decade. Data from one of the two sources, however, indicates that the characteristics of children injured have changed little over the decade.
subsections: section_title: Number and Characteristics of Work- Related Fatalities and Fatality Rates for Working Children Changed Little over the Decade
paragraphs: The number and characteristics of work-related fatalities and fatality rates for working children remained relatively constant from 1992 to 2000. Each year, according to data collected by BLS on work-related fatal injuries,between 62 and 73 children died from injuries sustained while working, a total of 613 children over the 9-year period. In addition, the fatality rate for children aged 15 to 17—the number of deaths per 100,000 hours worked— was fairly constant, ranging from approximately 0.006 deaths per 100,000 hours worked in 1998 to about 0.010 deaths per 100,000 hours worked in 1992. (See fig. 5.)
Demographic data for children who died as a result of a work-related injury show that most of the children killed were boys 16 years of age or older. Although girls were as likely as boys to work from 1992 to 2000, boys were almost eight times more likely to die as a result of a work- related injury than girls. In addition, although most of the children killed (about 60 percent) were aged 16 and 17, a substantial number (20 percent) were 13 years of age or younger. (See table 5.)
Most of the children younger than age 15 who died as the result of a work- related injury were employed in agriculture, and about 50 percent of the children who died as a result of injuries incurred while working in agriculture were 14 years old or younger. Moreover, even though most children who died from a work-related injury were white (75 percent), Hispanic children had a fatality rate that was twice as high as the rate for white children. (See table 6.)
Fatality data also show that certain industries and types of businesses pose a greater danger to working children. During the decade, over 40 percent of the children killed as a result of work-related injuries worked in agriculture, primarily crop production. Retail trade and construction accounted for 20 percent and 14 percent of all fatalities, respectively. (See fig. 6.) In addition, although children who worked in family businesses accounted for less than 1 percent of all working children, they accounted for about one-third of all fatalities. Moreover, children who worked for small employers—those with 10 employees or less—accounted for nearly two-thirds of the fatalities for which employer size was reported. About 90 percent of the children killed who worked for an agricultural employer for which establishment size was reported worked for employers with 10 or fewer employees.
Data on fatality rates, however, show that the number of hours children work in each industry needs to be considered as well as the number of deaths. For example, although many of the children killed worked in retail trade, the fatality rate was 0.003 per 100,000 hours worked, much lower than the rate in construction, 0.050, in which 14 percent of the fatalities occurred. (See table 7.) For transportation and public utilities, the fatality rate was also relatively high, 0.027, although this industry only accounted for 3 percent of the fatalities.
Children die as a result of many different types of work-related accidents. From 1992 to 2000, 44 percent of all children killed as a result of a work- related injury died as a result of transportation-related accidents, including highway collisions and nonhighway incidents, such as a fall from a moving vehicle. Other common events included being caught or compressed by equipment or being struck by a falling or flying object. (See fig. 7.) For example, in 2000, a 16-year-old boy who worked in a supermarket was crushed to death by a cardboard box compactor, and another 16-year-old boy was crushed when the forklift he was operating flipped over and landed on his chest.
Overall, the characteristics of children who died as a result of work- related injuries and the characteristics of their fatalities remained relatively constant from 1992 to 2000, although transportation-related fatalities appeared to increase. In both 1992 and 2000, 60 percent of the children who died as a result of work-related injuries were 16 and 17 years old, and 75 percent of children killed for whom race was available were white. In addition, throughout the decade, the percentage of children killed who worked in agriculture generally ranged from 33 percent to 44 percent, although it rose to 58 percent in 1998. While most characteristics changed little over the decade, the number of children who died as the result of a work-related transportation incident increased from 37 percent in 1992 to 52 percent in 2000.
section_title: Two Data Sources Show Different Numbers and Trends for Nonfatal Injuries
paragraphs: The two primary sources of nationwide data on work-related injuries, one collected by BLS from employer records and the other collected by NIOSH from emergency room records, differ substantially in their estimates of the number of working children injured each year, the types of injuries they sustained, and the trends over time. For 1999, BLS reported that almost 13,000 children were injured on the job, while NIOSH estimated that over 80,000 children were injured on the job that year. BLS’s estimate came from records that employers are required to maintain for all work-related injuries serious enough to cause children to miss at least one day of work. NIOSH’s estimate was based on records of injuries treated in emergency rooms. In addition, different types of injuries were more prevalent among those reported by employers than those treated in emergency rooms. BLS data for 1992 to 2000 showed that sprains, strains, and tears were the most common injuries, while NIOSH data indicated that lacerations were the most common injury.
The BLS and NIOSH data also, over time, indicate different trends in the numbers of work-related injuries to children. BLS data show that injuries have decreased by more than 40 percent, from about 22,000 in 1992 to about 13,000 in 1999. However, data from NIOSH suggest that injuries may have actually increased during the same period, from about 64,000 in 1992 to about 80,000 in 1999. (See fig. 8.)
Due to limitations of both data sources, it is difficult to determine the true extent of injuries to children who work. Both sets of data underreport injuries to children. BLS captures only injuries serious enough to require at least one missed day of work; therefore, data on many injuries are not captured. Moreover, because most children work part-time, many children who are injured may not miss a full day of work because they were not scheduled to work after being injured. In addition, BLS does not collect data on children who are self-employed; those who work in federal, state, or local government; those who work for agricultural employers with fewer than 11 employees; and household workers. NIOSH data also underreport injuries because children who are injured may not inform hospital staff that their injuries are work-related and hospital staff may omit details of injuries that connect them to work. As a result, some injuries treated in emergency rooms may not be accurately counted as being work-related. Although BLS and NIOSH officials recognized that the data they collect underreport the number of work-related injuries to children, and recognized the limitations in their data, they emphasized that their data capture information on different types of injuries and can be used to complement each other. For example, certain types of injuries such as lacerations may be treated in emergency rooms but not necessitate one or more days away from work, while other types of injuries that may result in missed work days such as sprains and strains may be more commonly treated in physicians’ offices or outpatient clinics than in emergency rooms. Officials were not, however, able to explain why the trends indicated by the two sources differed so greatly.
section_title: Characteristics of Injuries and of Children Injured Changed Little from 1992 to 2000
paragraphs: Although BLS data from employer records on work-related injuries to children are not complete, they provide information on the types of injuries sustained by children over the past decade. In general, the characteristics of occupational injuries to children and the characteristics of children who were injured as indicated by the BLS data changed little from 1992 to 2000. Demographic data for children injured show that 60 percent of the injuries occurred to boys, even though they accounted for only about half of all working children. Moreover, during this period, children aged 16 and over sustained the vast majority of all work-related injuries. BLS data also show that, throughout the decade, most children (84 percent) were injured while working in the two industries in which children are most likely to work—retail trade and services. Within these industries, in 2000, children who worked in eating and drinking places, food stores, general merchandise stores, and health services had the largest numbers of injuries. The injury rates per hours worked, however, were lower for the retail trade and services industries than the rates for children who worked in wholesale trade, transportation and public utilities, and manufacturing.
However, as with fatalities, the likelihood of injury needs to be considered in addition to the actual number of injuries. We found that the risk of injury was highest in some industries with the smallest number of injuries to children. For example, although many fewer children who worked in the wholesale trade, transportation and public utilities, and manufacturing industries sustained a work-related injury than those who worked in retail trade and in services, children working in wholesale trade, transportation and public utilities, and manufacturing had higher rates of injury than those working in retail trade or services. (See table 8.)
Injuries are caused by a variety of factors, but most frequently from coming into contact with an object or equipment. (See fig. 10.) For example, in 1998 a 17-year-old worker fractured his hand when a piece of metal slipped off a power-driven machine he was operating and landed on his hand. Other common accidents were overexertion, falls, and contact with hot objects. The causes of work-related nonfatal injuries were fairly constant over this period.
The nature of work-related injuries to children also did not change from 1992 to 2000. Children injured on the job most frequently sustained strains and tears, cuts and lacerations, and bruises and contusions. (See fig. 11.)
In contrast to the decrease in the number of injuries indicated by the BLS data, the severity of injuries to children (as defined by median number of days away from work) reported by BLS has remained relatively constant throughout the decade. About 65 percent of the injuries from 1992 to 2000 required children to miss 5 or fewer days of work, while 20 percent of the injuries required them to miss more than 10 days. (See fig. 12.)
section_title: Labor’s Enforcement of the Child Labor Provisions of FLSA Has Limitations
paragraphs: Labor has devoted substantial resources to ensuring compliance with the child labor provisions of FLSA over the past decade, and has continuously indicated that child labor is one of the agency’s highest priorities, but its efforts to improve employer compliance suffer from limitations that hamper its enforcement of the law. First, while Labor has recently begun to identify specific, measurable goals for the industries in which children are most likely to work, it continues to lack goals for those industries where children face significant risks.  Second, it has not developed methods of measuring the success of many of its child labor compliance efforts. Third, Labor does not use all available data to plan its future efforts or measure its progress in improving employer compliance and ensuring that all working children are adequately protected under the law. Finally, Labor does not provide sufficient guidance and training to its regional and district offices on how to use their resources most effectively or help them consistently apply the child labor provisions of FLSA.
subsections: section_title: Goals Have Only Recently Been Developed for Industries in Which Children Are Most Likely to Work
paragraphs: Since 1990, Labor has developed better goals for increasing employer compliance with the child labor provisions of FLSA. Over the decade, its goals for improving compliance have moved from general statements about conducting investigations and education and outreach activities designed to increase child labor compliance to more specific goals that focus on improving compliance rates in certain low-wage industries such as agriculture and low-wage businesses such as nursing homes and residential care facilities—rates established through investigations of employers in those industries. Labor recently established specific goals for fiscal year 2003 for the industries in which children are most likely to work.
WHD’s national goals in the early part of the decade focused on increasing the number of its child labor enforcement activities. For example, Labor’s goals for fiscal years 1990 and 1992 focused on its plans to dramatically increase the number of child labor investigations through nationwide efforts it called “Operation Child Watch.” These high-visibility efforts involved sending out hundreds of investigators for 1- and 2-day periods to conduct child labor investigations. As a result of these investigations, WHD found thousands of child labor violations and assessed millions of dollars in penalties. Operation Child Watch also gave WHD a sense of where it could expect to find child labor violations in the future.
In fiscal year 2000, Labor considered setting specific goals for industries in which many children worked and were likely to be injured—the grocery and restaurant industries—but decided not to based on the results it received from a survey of employers. That year, WHD conducted a “survey” of employers designed to establish baseline compliance rates for employers in these industries. In the survey, WHD conducted investigations of statistically valid samples of supermarkets, full-service restaurants, and fast food restaurants that employ children and found that the overall compliance rates for these industries were 82 percent, 78 percent, and 70 percent, respectively. It also conducted investigations of employers with prior child labor violations and found that, although the compliance rates for two of the three industries were still lower than the overall compliance rates, the rates had improved from 0 percent previously to 72 percent of supermarkets with prior violations, 52 percent of full-service restaurants, and 72 percent of fast food restaurants. Because WHD considered these rates to be sufficiently high, particularly compared to other industries, it decided not to set goals for these industries for improving compliance with the child labor provisions of FLSA.
WHD made this decision despite the conclusions reached in its analysis of the results of the survey. The analysis stated that, while child labor compliance rates were relatively higher in these three industries than overall FLSA compliance rates, it would be a “serious mistake” to compare the findings of the survey with compliance rates found in its surveys of other industries because all of the requirements of FLSA were not evaluated in the child labor compliance survey. In addition, the analysis stated that there were “still enormous child labor compliance issues that these industries need to address,” with at least 52,000 and as many as 220,000 children illegally employed in the three industries. The analysis also stated that the compliance rate in some segments of these industries was lower than the overall compliance rates. For example, it noted that although most children employed in full service restaurants, 89 percent, were employed in compliance with the child labor provisions of FLSA, the compliance rate was much lower, 53 percent, for 14- and 15-year-olds working in these restaurants.
More recently, WHD developed specific goals for improving overall employer compliance with FLSA in some low-wage industries, including compliance with the child labor provisions. For example, WHD’s fiscal year 2002 performance plan established a goal of 75 percent compliance with the minimum wage, overtime, and child labor provisions of FLSA for employers in the long-term health care industry (nursing homes and residential care facilities).
In September 2002, in its comments on a draft of this report, Labor reported that WHD had developed specific, measurable goals in its draft fiscal year 2003 annual performance plan. The draft plan includes goals for grocery stores, fast food restaurants, and full-service restaurants, industries in which children are most likely to work. WHD did not, however, establish goals for industries in which we found that children were likely to be employed illegally, such as manufacturing and construction, or for industries in which children have the highest rates of fatalities and nonfatal injuries, such as construction, wholesale trade, and transportation and public utilities.
section_title: Methods of Measuring the Success of All Efforts to Improve Compliance Have Not Been Developed
paragraphs: WHD has not developed adequate methods of measuring the success of all of its child labor compliance efforts. Over the decade, WHD’s measures of success have generally consisted of counting the number of its child labor compliance activities. For example, WHD measured the success of Operation Child Watch in the early 1990s by citing the large number of violations and penalties produced. More recently, WHD headquarters officials told us they look at trends in the number of child labor violations found each year, and noted that the numbers have dropped dramatically since the early 1990s. (See table 9.)
It is not clear, however, what factors led to the decrease in the number of violations. It could have resulted from an increased rate of compliance among employers, the decrease in the number of child labor investigations conducted by WHD, or other factors. For example, since Operation Child Watch, the number of investigator hours devoted to child labor investigations has declined from a high of 11 percent to 7 percent in 2001, with a low of 5 percent in 1998. (See table 10.)
While WHD headquarters officials use various factors to measure the success of their enforcement efforts, they told us that they do not know how to develop methods of measuring the success of their education and outreach activities. Officials told us they could tell their activities generate attention if WHD receives a lot of media inquires and that they count the number of times individuals access information from WHD’s Web site. However, WHD does not link its education and outreach activities with changes in employer behavior. While we recognize the inherent difficulties in assessing the impact on employer behavior of WHD’s education and outreach activities, particularly the difficulty of establishing a cause and effect relationship between changes in compliance and WHD’s activities, such measurement is important in distributing WHD’s limited resources. Moreover, we found that some district offices were trying to develop such methods. For example, officials at one district office told us that they felt it was important to obtain at least an indication of success by conducting investigations of employers after their education and outreach activities. They also said they were working with researchers at the University of Tennessee to develop methods of measuring the success of all of their child labor compliance activities.
Despite having difficulty in developing methods of measuring the effectiveness of its education and outreach activities, WHD headquarters officials told us that they devote a lot of their resources—both at the national and local level— to education and outreach and other compliance assistance activities. Since Operation Child Watch, most of Labor’s national child labor campaigns have focused on providing education and outreach and other compliance assistance to employers and on increasing public awareness of the child labor provisions of FLSA. For example, from 1996 to 2001, WHD conducted its “Work Safe This Summer” initiative designed to reach children beginning summer jobs. As part of this national initiative, WHD provided pamphlets and posters with information on the child labor provisions of FLSA, a Web site with safety tips and information about the law, and a public service announcement displayed on movie screens in 22 states and printed on 37 million shopping bags distributed by K-Mart. Labor’s newest national child labor initiative, “YouthRules!” announced by the Secretary in May 2002, is aimed at “educating young workers, parents and employers about workplace hazards, proper hours of work and ensuring that students’ education should be everyone’s first priority.” The initiative includes partnerships that WHD has formed with all levels of government as well as businesses, unions, and advocacy groups to provide training and educational materials, such as bookmarks that list some of the rules regarding jobs in which children ages 14 through 17 can work. (See fig. 13.)
section_title: All Available Data Are Not Used to Plan or Assess the Success of Child Labor Compliance Efforts
paragraphs: WHD does not use all of the data available to plan its future child labor compliance efforts or assess their success. WHD does not routinely use data from BLS to identify the industries and occupations in which children work, or data from BLS and NIOSH to determine the industries or occupations in which children are most likely to sustain work-related injuries. WHD also does not use information from its investigations database or reports on local child labor initiatives to assess the results of the regional and district offices’ child labor compliance efforts or hold them accountable for ensuring that the child labor provisions of FLSA are enforced adequately nationwide.
WHD does not routinely obtain information from BLS on the industries and occupations in which children work—legally or illegally—or those in which they are most likely to be injured or killed to use in targeting its compliance efforts. As a result, WHD may not target sufficient resources to these areas. For example, we estimated that a significant proportion of illegally employed children worked in construction and manufacturing— industries in which WHD targets few of its child labor compliance efforts. We also found that children were more likely to be injured or killed while working in several industries in which WHD conducts few child labor investigations—construction, wholesale trade, and transportation and public utilities. WHD officials told us that they do not use data from BLS on the industries and occupations in which children work because the information is not easily accessible and because the data do not provide information at the local level that could be used to help plan local compliance efforts. However, CPS data is available at the regional level and we developed state-level information by combining several years of data. For example, by combining CPS data for 4 years (1998 to 2001) and comparing it to the provisions of FLSA, we estimated the number of children illegally employed in each state. (See app. I for detailed information on these estimates.)
WHD also does not utilize information from its investigations database to determine what types of strategies are most successful in detecting child labor violations in its investigations of employers. WHD conducts child labor investigations either as a result of a receiving a complaint about a possible child labor violation or from a decision by a WHD office to conduct investigations of employers that focus specifically on children they employ (“self-initiated” investigations). WHD officials told us that, although they review every complaint they receive about a possible child labor violation, they do not receive many complaints about child labor.They also said that WHD’s national office does not require all district offices to conduct self-initiated child labor investigations. In fact, since Operation Child Watch, the only national initiative that required all district offices to conduct child labor investigations was the child labor compliance survey WHD conducted of the grocery and restaurant industries in fiscal year 2000. WHD officials also told us that it is not necessary for the national office to require all of its district offices to conduct self-initiated child labor investigations because investigators look for child labor violations during all investigations, not just those that focus on child labor. However, in reviewing data we requested from WHD’s investigations database, we found that, although self-initiated child labor investigations accounted for only 5 percent of all investigations completed in fiscal year 2001, these investigations accounted for almost 40 percent of all cases in which child labor violations were found. (See table 11.) In other words, WHD would have missed a large proportion of the cases with child labor violations if some district offices had not conducted self- initiated child labor investigations in the absence of a national directive to do so.
WHD headquarters officials also do not use data from its investigations database to ensure that district offices nationwide are providing an adequate level of protection to all children who work by ensuring that all district offices nationwide conduct at least some minimum number of child labor investigations. From the data we obtained for fiscal year 2001, we found that the number of investigations conducted by each district office and by WHD’s five regions varied widely and that a few district offices accounted for a large number of the child labor investigations and cases in which child labor violations were found. For example, in fiscal year 2001, we found that the total number of child labor investigations (both those initiated by complaints and self-initiated investigations) conducted by the district offices in each region varied widely, from a total of 942 child labor investigations in the northeast region to a total of 227 investigations in the southwest region. We also found that the number of investigations conducted by each of the district offices varied widely; 8 of the 50 district offices accounted for 43 percent of all child labor investigations completed in fiscal year 2001, and 9 of the 50 district offices completed fewer than 10 self-initiated child labor investigations in fiscal year 2001. WHD headquarters officials were not able to explain these regional and district variances.
Although WHD’s regional and district offices conduct many local child labor initiatives, WHD headquarters officials do not use the quarterly reports prepared by these offices on their local initiatives to ensure that, nationwide, local child labor initiatives provide adequate protection for all children who work. WHD headquarters officials told us that all regional and district offices should have some local child labor initiatives, unless they have a reasonable justification not to, such as other higher-priority compliance efforts, and that, in recent years, every district office has had some local child labor initiatives. However, the reports we reviewed for fiscal years 1999 through 2002 showed that, in some years, many districts had no child labor initiatives and the number of child labor initiatives varied significantly from one region to another. For example, in fiscal year 2000, almost all of the district offices in the northeast region had at least one child labor initiative and two regions had regionwide initiatives that required all of their district offices to conduct child labor investigations. Some of the district offices in the southwest region, however, had no local child labor initiatives planned for fiscal years 1999 through 2002, although our estimates of illegally employed children showed greater numbers of children in the South to be illegally employed than in the Northeast.
section_title: Sufficient Guidance and Training Has Not Been Provided to Regional and District Offices
paragraphs: While WHD leaves many of the decisions about how to deploy enforcement resources to its regional and district offices, it does not ensure that these offices receive sufficient guidance and training to properly target or carry out their child labor compliance efforts. In addition, some regional and district offices do not use data on previous child labor violations to target their compliance efforts because WHD has not provided all staff with adequate training on how to obtain reports from its investigations database.
WHD’s national office does not provide regional and district offices with adequate guidance on how to target their child labor compliance efforts. WHD’s national office has not provided criteria to the regional and district offices to use in targeting their child labor compliance efforts. Instead, district offices generally rely on the anecdotal knowledge they have gained from previous investigations to plan their future compliance efforts.
WHD’s national office also does not provide regional or district offices with data from BLS on the industries and occupations in which children work, legally or illegally, and are most likely to be injured. Officials in one district office we visited told us that, because of their past enforcement efforts, illegal child labor was not a problem in their area and thus, they did not devote a lot of their enforcement resources to targeting child labor violations. However, our analysis showed that a large percentage of children working in this state worked in those industries where children were most likely to be injured. In addition, our estimates of the number of illegally employed children in each state showed that a larger proportion of 15-year-olds in that state were likely to be employed illegally than those in any other state we visited. While these estimates do not prove that illegal child labor was a problem in the area of the state covered by that district office, it is an indication that potential violations exist undetected.
WHD’s national office also does not provide specific guidance to regional and district offices on when to assess penalties for child labor violations. As a result, district office practices for penalty assessment and collection vary significantly. In reviewing investigations with child labor violations completed in fiscal years 2000 and 2001 at the district offices we visited, we found that district officials sometimes reduced the penalties for child labor violations or did not assess any penalties for child labor violations while in other, similar cases, they assessed penalties. For example, one district office we visited generally did not waive penalties for child labor violations it found, but another district office waived many of the penalties for the child labor violations it found, including a violation of a Hazardous Occupations Order involving a child who was working with dangerous equipment. We also found that the average percentage of the penalties collected varied significantly among the district offices we visited—from a low of 49 percent of the original amount assessed to a high of 82 percent for investigations completed in fiscal years 2000 and 2001.
Finally, WHD does provide adequate training to all of its regional and district offices on how to obtain reports from the investigations database to use in targeting their child labor compliance efforts. Two of the five regional child labor coordinators and officials at two of the district offices we visited indicated that they had not been trained on how to obtain reports from WHD’s database. Officials at the district offices we visited told us they had staff members with the skills needed to obtain reports from the investigations database that enabled them to identify where they had found child labor violations in the past to use in targeting their future compliance efforts. Officials at two of these offices, however, said that they had only one person with these skills and that, if they lost this person, they would not be able to obtain the reports they need from the investigations database.
section_title: Conclusions
paragraphs: By allowing and encouraging children to work, the nation acknowledges that children can derive many benefits from working, such as independence, confidence, and responsibility. However, work may also have negative consequences for children’s physical, emotional, and educational development. In recognition of this, Labor devotes significant attention to enforcing the child labor provisions of FLSA and ensuring safe and productive work experiences for children. Over the last decade, its efforts have ranged from conducting investigations to carrying out nationwide education and outreach campaigns.
Despite the importance that WHD places on ensuring the safety of children who work, it faces difficulty in showing that its efforts have made a difference in improving the working conditions of children. WHD’s ability to effectively enforce the child labor provisions of FLSA is dependent, in part, upon the establishment of a sound performance management system that provides program managers with the type of information they need to evaluate the effectiveness of their child labor compliance efforts and ensure that their limited resources are used in the most effective manner. WHD has taken some steps towards developing such a system, as reflected in the program goals it has established and refined in recent years. However, WHD continues to lack goals for industries that have high rates of injuries and fatalities. Further, WHD’s performance management system does not allow managers to fully assess the impact of its child labor compliance efforts. As a result, WHD lacks a sound basis for determining, among other things, the extent to which it should devote resources to child labor investigations versus its education and outreach and other compliance assistance activities. Its resource allocation decisions are also hindered because WHD does not routinely use all of the data available from BLS and NIOSH to target its child labor compliance efforts to the places that are most dangerous for children and in which they are most likely to work illegally. Similarly, by not fully utilizing information from its own investigations database to evaluate the child labor compliance efforts of its regional and district offices, WHD is not able to target its local efforts most effectively or hold local offices accountable at the national level for enforcing the child labor provisions of FLSA and ensuring that all children who work are adequately protected. Finally, even if WHD were to use all existing data as effectively as possible, it would still not be able to use the data to better target its child labor compliance efforts for children younger than 15 because BLS’s CPS data do not include information on 14-year-olds who work and NLSY97 does not have information on children born after 1984. We recognize, however, that collecting these data will require additional resources.
Regional and district offices also need sufficient guidance and training to effectively carry out their mission. Because WHD’s national office leaves many decisions about the appropriate amount of resources to devote to child labor compliance efforts to its regional and district offices, but does not provide them with criteria for targeting their efforts or data on industries and occupations in which children work and are most likely to be injured, they may not be using their limited resources as efficiently as possible. Additionally, because district offices do not receive specific guidance from WHD’s national office about when to assess penalties for child labor violations, nationwide, they do not consistently assess penalties for these violations. Finally, because staff in WHD’s district offices do not receive adequate training on how to use WHD’s investigations database, they are not able to effectively use all available information to help them assess their past child labor compliance efforts and better target their future efforts.
section_title: Recommendations
paragraphs: To strengthen WHD’s ability to evaluate the effectiveness of its child labor compliance efforts and ensure that limited resources are used in the most effective manner, the Secretary of Labor should   establish additional specific, measurable goals for WHD’s child labor compliance efforts for industries in which children are most likely to be injured or killed;   develop methods of measuring the success of WHD’s child labor compliance efforts, including its education and outreach activities; routinely obtain data from BLS and NIOSH on the industries, occupations, and locations in which children work—both legally and illegally—and sustain work-related injuries and use them to target WHD’s child labor compliance efforts; routinely obtain and review data from its investigations database on the number and types of investigations conducted by WHD’s district offices and child labor violations found and use these data to (1) ensure that WHD’s resources are deployed in the most effective manner and (2) hold regional and local offices accountable at the national level for ensuring that all children nationwide are protected under the child labor provisions of FLSA;   consider enhancing the data collected on children who work by expanding CPS to include 14-year olds or beginning additional cohorts of NLSY at regular intervals, such as every five years.
To provide WHD’s regional and district offices with the information they need to properly plan and implement their child labor compliance efforts, the Secretary of Labor should   provide better guidance to WHD’s regional and district offices on how to improve employer compliance and specific guidance on when to assess penalties for child labor violations.   provide training to all WHD staff on how to obtain information from the investigations database.
section_title: Agency Comments and Our Evaluation
paragraphs: We provided a draft of this report to Labor for comment. Overall, Labor disagreed with many of the conclusions and recommendations in the draft. Labor’s comments and our specific responses are included in app. IV.
Labor disagreed with our recommendation to establish specific, measurable goals for industries in which most children work and in which they are most likely to be injured or killed. The agency noted that WHD’s draft fiscal year 2003 performance plan includes specific goals for the industries that employ the most children. One goal, for example, is to decrease the percentage of grocery stores and full-service restaurants with repeat child labor violations by 2 percent. We think these are positive steps and have revised our report to reflect these efforts. However, the draft performance plan does not include goals for other industries because Labor does not believe there are sufficient numbers of children working in these industries to justify setting such goals. We believe that this approach reduces attention to some of the industries that pose significant risks to children. For example, there are no specific goals for construction, which has high fatality and injury rates.
Labor also disagreed with the conclusions supporting our recommendation to develop methods of measuring the success of its child labor compliance efforts.  In this regard, Labor noted that it had recently decided to repeat its compliance survey of grocery stores, full-service restaurants, and fast food restaurants in fiscal year 2004. While we are encouraged by this step, Labor has not developed methods of measuring the success of other child labor compliance efforts, particularly its education and outreach activities, which, admittedly, are difficult to evaluate. In addition, it has not conducted child labor compliance surveys of other industries.
Finally, Labor took issue with our recommendation to routinely obtain data from BLS and NIOSH on the industries, occupations, and locations in which children work and sustain injuries and use them to target WHD’s child labor compliance efforts. Labor maintains that it does routinely use such data. However, we found that WHD has no procedures for routinely collecting data from BLS and NIOSH to plan its child labor enforcement efforts. Moreover, the district offices we visited confirmed that they do not receive this information to use in planning their local child labor efforts.
Labor agreed with the remainder of our recommendations or agreed to take action on them. For example, it agreed to obtain and review data from the WHISARD database to better hold local offices accountable, explore the possibilities of collecting additional data through CPS or NLSY, provide better guidance to WHD’s regional and district offices concerning penalty assessment, and provide training to WHD staff on how to obtain information from the investigations database.
Labor also provided technical comments and clarifications, which we incorporated in the report as appropriate.
We are sending copies of this report to the Secretary of Labor, the Wage and Hour Administrator, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other interested parties. Copies will be made available to others upon request. This report is also available at no charge on GAO’s Web site at http://www.gao.gov.
If you have any questions concerning this report please contact me at (202) 512-7215 or Lori Rectanus at (202) 512-9847. Other major contributors are listed in appendix. V.
section_title: Appendix I: Scope and Methodology
paragraphs: This appendix discusses in more detail our scope and methodology for (1) estimating the number of working children in the United States who are employed illegally, (2) using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to estimate the number of 12- to 14-year-olds in the United States who work, (3) computing fatality and injury rates for working children, and (4) using data on occupational injuries to calculate relative risk. Most of the estimates in the report were calculated using data obtained from samples and, therefore, have sampling errors associated with them. All differences included in the report were tested for statistical significance at the 0.05 level.
subsections: section_title: Estimating the Number of Children Employed Illegally in the United States
paragraphs: To estimate the number of children who are employed illegally in the United States—children employed in violation of the child labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)—we compared data obtained from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s (BLS) Current Population Survey (CPS) on children in the United States who work to the child labor provisions of FLSA. Because CPS does not capture data on children in the United States who work in occupations that are illegal under criminal statutes, such as drug dealing and prostitution, we could not include them in our estimates. In developing our estimates, we worked with Douglas Kruse, Ph.D., a professor at Rutgers University’s School of Management and Labor Relations and a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research who updated our initial estimate of illegal child labor in the 1991 GAO report on child labor using CPS data from January 1995 to September 1997. We compared CPS data for 1990, 1996, and 2001 to the child labor provisions of FLSA by defining the base population and identifying illegal employment by occupation and hours. We further refined this analysis through the use of logistic regression for illegal occupations and cross- tabulations for hours.
subsections: section_title: Defining the Base Population
paragraphs: We used data from 36 monthly surveys from CPS for the following years: 1990, 1996 and 2001. For each year, we created data sets with children aged 15 to 17. Each year held roughly 70,000 observations.
We defined the base population by using the child labor provisions of FLSA as a guide. Because FLSA does not apply to children who are self-employed and the provisions are much less stringent for children who work in agriculture than for those who work in nonagricultural jobs, we eliminated children who were self-employed and those who worked in agriculture from the data set. Key questions concerning child employment in a family business were not added to CPS until 1994. Therefore, in order to compare results for 2001 with results for 1990, we included children who worked in a family business in the 2001 base population, even though these children are not covered by FLSA. (See app. III for information on the number of children in the United States who worked in a family business in 2001.)
To obtain numbers of children who worked illegally, we averaged the results of the nine school months to obtain the number of children who worked illegally in school months (defined in our report as September through May) and the three summer months to obtain the number of children who worked illegally in summer months (defined as June through August).
To simplify the discussion on racial differences, we combined race and ethnicity categories. CPS treats ethnicity separately from race. As a result, a child can be identified in CPS as both “white” and “Hispanic,” or as both “black” and “Hispanic.” To separately determine the effect of illegal employment on whites, blacks, and Hispanics, we coded children whose race was identified as “white” or “black” and whose ethnicity was identified as “Hispanic,” as “Hispanic” only. For children whose race was identified as “black” or “white,” and whose ethnicity was identified as “non-Hispanic,” we included them in the category of race identified (i.e., as “black” or “white” only). This resulted in four racial categories: white, black, Hispanic, and other. For 1996 and 2001, “Other” included Asians and Native Americans. For 1990, “Other” included Asians, Native Americans and “Other,” which contained anyone who identified a race that did not fall within the other categories listed.
section_title: Illegal Employment: Occupations
paragraphs: Hazardous Occupations, 15- to 17-year-olds Using methods developed in our previous report and refined by Douglas Kruse, we defined a list of 100 occupational codes that correspond to activities prohibited by the Hazardous Occupations Orders. Any child in the base population with one of these codes was included in our estimates of children employed illegally.
We used a similar method to identify occupations specifically prohibited for 15-year-olds. In this instance, 216 occupational codes matched the descriptions of activities prohibited for 15-year-olds to children under 16. Any child identified in the base population with one of these codes was included in our estimates of children employed illegally.
Due to the small sample sizes of children identified in these groups, cross tabulations were not statistically significant at the 0.05 level. In order to obtain information on the likelihood of children who were most likely to work in illegal occupations, we conducted a logistic regression.
To determine demographic differences in the likelihood of working illegally, the following variables were included in the model: sex, race, urbanicity (metropolitan or non-metropolitan area), income, citizenship, and region. Differences that were found to be statistically significant are indicated in table 12 below.
section_title: Illegal Employment: Hours for 15-year-olds
paragraphs: We used the CPS variable that describes the number of hours actually worked each week to determine whether 15-year-olds worked more hours than allowed each week under FLSA. Children who worked over 18 hours in a week in school months, from September to May, were included in our estimates of illegal employment. Children who worked over 40 hours a week in summer months, June through August, were also included in our estimates. We further refined this analysis of the number of 15-year-olds who worked more hours than allowed under the law by conducting cross tabulations for race, industry, occupation, sex, geographic region, metropolitan area, and income.
section_title: Regional and State-Level Results
paragraphs: To estimate levels of illegal employment in each region, we used data for the four regions defined in CPS: Midwest, Northeast, South, and West. The states included in each region are Midwest:     Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri,                        Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin; Northeast:  Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont; South:           Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida,                        Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North                        Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas,                        Virginia, and West Virginia; and West:             Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho,                         Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington,                         and Wyoming.
To estimate illegal employment in each state, we combined CPS data for 4 years (48 monthly surveys) from 1998 to 2001. Because observations at the state level were relatively small, combining data for 4 years increased the sample size and allowed us to make estimates about the state population.
section_title: Limitations of Our Estimates of Illegal Employment
paragraphs: The specific nature of child labor laws makes it difficult to reconcile them with generalized data sources. FLSA and implementing regulations and guidance describe activities that children are prohibited from performing. Although CPS data on occupations are fairly specific, they do not list the actual activities children perform on the job. Therefore, it is not possible to determine whether each child who works in a prohibited occupation category is actually performing prohibited activities. As a result, our estimates of illegal employment are both under- and overstated. The estimates are understated—probably by a significant amount—because many activities prohibited, particularly the many types of equipment children are prohibited from using detailed in the Hazardous Occupations Orders, cannot be gleaned by reviewing the occupational categories in CPS. For example, all children younger than 18 are prohibited from using meat slicers. However, although CPS shows that many children work in “food services,” it does not indicate how many of them work with meat slicers. The estimates are also overstated because they include some activities that are allowed in occupations that are prohibited. For example, because work as a public messenger is expressly prohibited for15-year- olds, we included children who worked in the occupation category “mail carrier” in our estimates of illegal employment. However, these children could have been delivering mail within an office or sorting mail in a mailroom, activities that are allowed. It was not, however, possible for us to determine the extent to which our estimates of illegal employment are under- or overstated as result of these limitations.
In addition, our estimates of the number of 15-year-olds are understated because CPS does not capture information necessary to determine the number of 15-year-olds who work more hours than allowed on a daily basis or at prohibited times of day. CPS does not collect information on either the length of the workday, nor its starting and ending times. As with prohibited occupations, however, it was not possible to determine the extent to which our estimates are understated as a result of these limitations. However, we believe that the amount of this understatement is large because many of the child labor violations found by WHD in its investigations of employers are violations of the restrictions on number of hours and times of day that children are allowed to work.
Finally, our estimates are overstated to the extent that they include children whose employment is not covered under FLSA, either because their employers do not meet the threshold for enterprise coverage under FLSA, or because the child does not work in interstate commerce. CPS does not collect information on the characteristics of employers for which children work, such as sales volume or other proxies for annual dollar volume of sales, or information that could be used to determine whether children work in interstate commerce. As with the other limitations, however, the extent to which our estimates are overstated because not all children work in employment covered under FLSA cannot be determined.
section_title: Using NLSY to Estimate the Employment of 12- to 14-year-olds in the United States
paragraphs: We used data from NLSY97, the survey of children born from 1980 to 1984, to estimate the number of 12- to 14-year-olds who work. In NLSY, children are asked whether or not they worked in each of the 52 weeks in a given year. We coded children noted in NLSY97 as being born in 1982 as 14 years old in 1996 and children born in 1983 as 14 years old in 1997. To determine employment for these children in 1996 and 1997, we identified those weeks that contained the 12th day of the month since the reference period for NLSY is the 12th week of a particular month. We determined the frequency of employed children in each of the 16 weeks and averaged the result over the total number of months in each period. We performed these calculations for three periods in 1996 and one period in 1997 as shown in table 4 in this report.
Most employment questions in NLSY deal with events that take place after the child’s 14th birthday. As a result, we used a different method to estimate employment for children younger than 14 years of age. One of the variables in NLSY97 identified children who indicated that they had received income from a job in the previous year (1996). We coded children born in 1983 and 1984 as being 13 years of age and 12 years of age, respectively. We coded these children who said they had received income from a job as having been employed at some point in the previous year.
section_title: Computing Fatality and Injury Rates for Working Children
paragraphs: To calculate fatality and injury rates for children, we used data from three BLS sources: (1) data on fatal work-related injuries from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, (2) data on nonfatal injuries from the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, and (3) data on the hours children work from CPS.
We used the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries and Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses to identify the number and characteristics of 15- to 17-year-olds who died as a result of a work-related injury or sustained a nonfatal injury from 1992 to 2000. Because the number of fatalities in each year was relatively low, we aggregated the data over the decade to provide statistically reliable information. We did not aggregate the data on nonfatal injuries over the decade because the number of injuries reported was large.
We calculated fatality and injury rates by using the total number of hours children worked as indicated in CPS. We, and some other researchers, consider this method more appropriate than using the number of children who work to compute fatality and injury rates because many children work part-time. Using the number of hours children work provides a better measure of exposure to injury and leads to a more accurate assessment of risk than using the number of children.
We used data from 108 monthly surveys to obtain the total number of hours worked by 15- to 17-year-olds between 1992 and 2000. In computing the rates for nonfatal injuries, we excluded children who worked for the government or were self-employed because they are excluded from the data for nonfatal injuries. We totaled the hours worked each week by all children for each year and totaled the hours worked each week for children of different sexes, races, and those who worked in certain industries. Because the data sets for fatal and nonfatal injuries use different industry groupings than CPS, we combined industries so that they would reflect the same industry groupings. Because we were not able to obtain SOII data that only included 15- to 17-year-olds by industry, we calculated industry rates by dividing the total number of injuries to children under 18 by the total hours worked by 15- to 17-year-olds in each industry. Since CPS data do not include hours worked by children younger than 15, we were unable to include the hours worked by these children in our calculations. However, since children under 15 make up less than 1 percent of all injuries to children, this discrepancy did not affect our estimates.
To calculate the fatality rate for each category, we divided the total number of injuries by the total number of hours children worked and multiplied the result by 100,000. This figure represents the number of injuries per hundred thousand hours worked.
section_title: Appendix II: Recent Legislative Proposals on Child Labor
paragraphs: Several legislative proposals were introduced in the 107th Congress to strengthen the child labor provisions of FLSA. In July 2002, the Senate passed the Traveling Sales Crew Protection Act, legislation designed to ensure that child employees of traveling sales crews are protected under FLSA. The law includes provisions that prohibit children under age 18 from working in traveling sales work where they remain away from home for more than 24 hours. Other legislative proposals introduced in the 107th Congress are listed in table 13 below.
section_title: Appendix III: Detailed Information on Children in the United States Who Work
paragraphs: The number and characteristics of children who worked from 1990 to 2001 as tabulated from the Current Population Survey (CPS) data we obtained from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are detailed in the tables below.
section_title: Appendix IV: Comments from The Department of Labor
subsections: section_title: GAO Comments
paragraphs: 1.  Our draft report acknowledged the difficulty of estimating the number of children employed in violation of the child labor provisions of FLSA and the limitations of using CPS data to provide such estimates. While recognizing these limitations, we continue to believe that our analysis provides the best estimates that can be made with available data. In fact, we used the same methods as those used to develop estimates cited by BLS and WHD in several of their publications. For example, in BLS’s November 2000 Report on the Youth Labor Force and WHD’s May 2000 materials prepared for its “Spring Into Safety” child labor campaign, they cited estimates of the number of children illegally employed prepared by Douglas Kruse, the researcher with whom we worked in developing our estimates. WHD stated that his 1997 study provided “the best currently available estimate of the number of children employed in violation of Federal or State child labor laws.” 2.  Labor cites the drop in workplace injuries indicated by the BLS data from the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses as evidence that “the workplace is becoming safer for young workers,” but ignores NIOSH data from emergency room records that indicates that workplace injuries to children are on the rise. 3.  Although we highlighted many of Labor’s efforts to ensure compliance with the child labor provisions of FLSA, our report was not intended to describe all of the agency’s child labor enforcement efforts over the past ten years but rather, as requested, to determine how well Labor enforces these provisions and to make recommendations for improvement. 4.  WHD is correct in its statement that the number of investigator hours devoted to child labor enforcement in fiscal year 2001, 74,000 hours, represents the largest investment of investigator time by WHD in the last 5 years. However, our report, which focuses on WHD’s efforts since 1990, shows that this is lower than the resources dedicated to child labor enforcement in the first half of the decade. For example, in fiscal years 1990, 1991, and 1992, WHD investigators devoted 143,000 hours, 83,000 hours, and 105,000 hours, respectively, to child labor enforcement. 5.  We did not provide information on the number of hours spent by WHD investigators on activities other than investigations because, although the investigations database, WHISARD, can track this information, we found, and WHD officials confirmed, that it did not contain complete information on the time investigators spend on non-enforcement activities such as education and outreach. 6.  We continue to believe that the trends in the number of child labor violations found and the amount of penalties assessed—including the fact that the numbers have declined significantly since 1990—are not valid indicators of WHD’s commitment to child labor compliance, nor are they evidence of the success of its efforts to ensure compliance with the child labor provisions of FLSA. As noted in our report, because we do not know what factors led to the changes in the number of violations, it is unclear whether the increase in the number of violations found by WHD in fiscal year 2002 compared to fiscal year 2001 indicates a growing problem with child labor, improvements in WHD’s efforts to identify violations, or other factors. 7.  This statement is misleading. Our draft report recognized that, in 2002, the maximum penalty for a child labor violation was raised from $10,000 to $11,000. We did not recognize WHD’s efforts to publish a final rule on the 1999 regulatory proposal to update some of the hazardous occupations orders or issue new regulations because these actions have not been completed. 8.  This statement is also misleading. Our draft report acknowledged that NIOSH completed a review of the hazardous occupations orders for Labor, which made several recommendations for changes to the orders. We also noted that Labor was in the process of reviewing the report and deciding the actions it would take in response to NIOSH’s recommendations. 9.  We believe that our report provides a comprehensive and balanced picture of the effectiveness of Labor’s efforts to ensure compliance with the child labor provisions of FLSA and contains important information on how these efforts could be improved. 10. The information in our draft report was based on our review of WHD’s fiscal year 2001 and 2002 annual performance plans. Neither of these plans contained specific, measurable goals for the industries in which most children work or in which children are most likely to sustain a serious injury. However, WHD’s draft performance plan for fiscal year 2003, which we recently obtained, appears to be a step in the right direction in terms of setting more specific, measurable goals, although it does not contain goals for some of the industries with high injury and fatality rates. Accordingly, we have revised the information in our report and the associated recommendations. 11. While the referenced employer compliance survey is an important step in setting goals for improving employer compliance, it is only one of the steps required. The baseline data become the starting point for measuring progress in improving compliance. However, after completing the survey in fiscal year 2000, WHD chose not to set specific goals for improving compliance in the grocery and restaurant industries in its fiscal year 2001 and 2002 performance plans. It made this decision even though the rate of non-compliance for fast food restaurants was 30 percent, and the non-compliance rate for full service restaurants with previous child labor violations was almost 50 percent. 12. We do not believe that the most important indicator of compliance is the percentage of children who are employed illegally. Although we agree it is an indicator that should be reviewed, a few companies that employ large numbers of children can have a disproportionate effect on the numbers. Therefore, we believe the most important indicator of compliance is the percentage of employers who are in compliance with the child labor provisions of FLSA, particularly because employers are responsible for maintaining compliance with the provisions of the law. 13. As noted previously, prior to fiscal year 2003, WHD’s annual performance plans did not contain specific, measurable goals for improving compliance with the child labor provisions of FLSA for many of the industries in which most children work or are likely to sustain work-related injuries. See GAO comment 10. 14. As Labor’s quotation indicates, the goals in WHD’s fiscal year 2002 performance plan did not establish specific goals for the industries in which most children work or are likely to sustain work-related injuries. See GAO comment 10. 15. As noted previously, we have revised the report to reflect the goals contained in WHD’s draft performance plan for fiscal year 2003. See GAO comment 10. 16. The fact that WHD conducts investigations in these industries does not negate the need for WHD to set goals for increasing compliance with the child labor provisions of FLSA for these industries. Because WHD conducts many of its investigations in response to complaints about possible violations, the resource allocations indicated in Labor’s charts may reflect WHD’s responses to complaints as much as the results of its efforts to target child labor violations in these industries. 17. We disagree that our analysis of fatality rates is a “flawed interpretation of the BLS and NIOSH data” and that is more appropriate to use the actual numbers of children employed, injured, and killed to determine risk. While we understand the importance of reviewing the number of children who work in each industry and the numbers of children injured or killed, we believe that injury and fatality rates are important indicators that WHD should use in allocating its resources. As noted in an article by a researcher at BLS about fatality rates, “although  counts are informative in identifying worker groups that experience large numbers of fatalities, they do not by themselves measure risk. To quantify risk, the data on workplace fatalities must be associated with a measure of worker exposure to risk, such as employment or hours worked. The number of hours worked is preferable because different workers spend variable hours on the job in a given time period (e.g. year), and therefore have different lengths of exposure to workplace hazards.” We believe it is particularly important to use the number of hours worked, rather than simply using the number of children employed, to calculate injury and fatality rates because so many children (87 percent) work part time. 18. For the transportation and public utilities industry, Labor mentions only fatality rates and the number of fatalities. In addition to high fatality rates for this industry, we found that the injury rate was high compared to other industries. Therefore, we believe that it is important for WHD to focus some of its resources on reviewing child labor in this industry. 19. It is not clear that establishing a goal for improving compliance in the transportation and public utilities industry would be unrealistic and counterproductive. Given the limitations of the estimates of illegal employment, we question the agency’s estimate that only 4,400 youth are employed illegally in this industry. The statistics cited by Labor on the number of violations found as evidence that violations are not prevalent in this industry are also questionable because it is unclear whether WHD would have found more child labor violations if it had targeted employers in this industry. 20. Labor cites only the fatality rates and number of deaths in the wholesale trade industry, although we found that the injury rates for children working in this industry were also relatively high. While the number of children working in this industry may be small, we believe the injury rates to be sufficiently high to warrant further WHD attention. WHD should look to the extensive experience of its staff cited on page 10 of Labor’s comments to identify the areas of the country in which children are most likely to work in these industries. 21. As with the transportation and public utilities and the wholesale trade industries, Labor only cites the fatality rates for the construction industry. Again, we noted that the injury rate for children who work in this industry was relatively high. In addition, we question how WHD determined that “many of these specialty trade contractors are so small that they do not meet the FLSA coverage criteria” because this information is not tracked in WHD’s investigations database and we found no data on employer coverage under FLSA. We also found, in our discussions with WHD officials, that establishing coverage for employers in the construction industry was not a problem for some of the district offices we visited, particularly those on the east coast. 22. CPS data on occupations show that many children are employed as truck drivers. However, our draft report incorrectly indicated that 43 percent of all children who are employed illegally are employed as truck drivers. We clarified the report to show that the percentage of children who are employed illegally as truck drivers represents 42 percent of children who are employed in prohibited occupations. 23. We continue to believe that the injury and fatality rates for children who work in the construction industry warrant WHD attention. We also commend WHD’s efforts to fund research by NIOSH on the health and safety of young workers in the industry. 24. As noted in our report, manufacturing has one of the highest injury rates for children. WHD’s opinion that targeting additional resources on this industry would not be a wise resource investment and would have no impact on occupational injuries and fatalities for children working in this industry does not factor in these high injury and fatality rates. In fact, some of the most serious child labor violations WHD found occurred in sawmills and companies that produce wood pallets. 25. We commend WHD’s recent decision to conduct a second compliance survey of the grocery, full service restaurant, and fast-food restaurant industries in fiscal year 2004. However, as stated in our report, WHD has not developed methods of measuring the success of all of its child labor compliance efforts, particularly its education and outreach and other compliance assistance activities. In addition, WHD has not conducted child labor compliance surveys of other industries. 26. In our conversations with WHD headquarters officials and in WHD publications, the number of investigations, violations found, and civil monetary penalties were frequently cited as indicators of the success of the WHD’s child labor enforcement efforts. In fact, on page 3 of the agency’s comments on our report, Labor cites the increase from fiscal years 2000 to 2001 in the number of child labor violations and the total amount of penalties assessed as evidence of “WHD’s continued strong commitment of resources to child labor compliance.” 27. We disagree with Labor’s statement that WHD routinely uses BLS and NIOSH data to plan the allocation of its child labor resources. We found that WHD has no procedures for routinely obtaining data from BLS and NIOSH to plan its child labor enforcement efforts and the district offices we visited confirmed that they do not receive this information for use in planning their local child labor efforts. Second, Labor’s statement that WHD routinely uses state workers’ compensation data to plan its enforcement efforts must be qualified to indicate that many states refuse to release this information to WHD because of privacy concerns. Third, WHD has, in the past, used only limited data from its WHISARD investigations database to plan its enforcement efforts. In some cases, reports we requested from the database, such as reports that showed the source of investigations completed in fiscal years 2000 and 2001, was the first time that WHD had run such reports. Finally, we believe the anecdotal information on injuries and fatalities maintained by WHD’s national office does not provide enough information to be useful in making WHD’s resource allocation decisions. The information on fatalities and serious injuries to children tracked by WHD’s national office and provided to us in May 2002 contained data on only 7 fatalities and 36 injuries reviewed by WHD in fiscal year 2001 and 7 fatalities and 32 injuries reviewed in fiscal year 2002. 28. We agree with Labor’s statement that our recommendation to consider enhancing the data collected on children who work by expanding CPS to include 14-year-olds or beginning additional cohorts of NLSY cannot be implemented without additional study and resources, which is why we recommended that the Secretary “consider” these actions instead of recommending that they be taken. We clarified our conclusions to acknowledge that collecting these data may require additional resources. 29. We continue to believe that WHD’s regional and district offices cannot target their resources in the most effective manner without having better criteria from WHD’s national office on how to target their enforcement efforts, including information from WHD’s investigations database on previous child labor investigations and from BLS and NIOSH on the industries in which children work and those in which they are most likely to be injured or killed.
section_title: Appendix V: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments
subsections: section_title: GAO Contacts
section_title: Staff Acknowledgments
paragraphs: Other major contributors to this report are Wendy Ahmed, Amy E. Buck, Beverly A. Crawford, Charla R. Gilbert, Julian P. Klazkin, Ellen L. Soltow, and Corinna A. Nicolaou.