The economy is strong (except for the child labor part)
What’s young is new again
Welcome to a Friday evening edition of Progress Report.
Every third Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases a new Employment Situation report, which details the latest shifts in the US labor market. The report’s key figure, the number of net jobs created per month, is seen as a major barometer for the American economy, a data point that is quickly plugged into financial markets and political narratives.
Far less attention is paid to the kinds of jobs that are created, and what those jobs pay is almost impossible to determine. This is not an accident, but instead the byproduct of the trickle down mentality that still frames economic policy and business media coverage.
Jobs are created from above; the workers that fill them are hardly part of the equation. They’re covered as interchangeable widgets, stripped of personality and agency, cogs ready to plug in when called upon. This also protects companies when they’re executing mass layoffs; eliminating a job is abstract, and thus far less cruel-sounding than firing somebody and throwing their life into chaos.
Amazon is a prime example of a corporation that takes advantage of the dehumanizing nomenclature. The company technically creates tens of thousands of jobs every year, yet the working Americans that are supposed to benefit from these jobs rarely do so. Turnover at their facilities is at 150% year over year, largely due to brutal conditions and mistreatment. Earlier today, I published a story about a worker at the company’s Staten Island facility who was regularly ostracized and then fired last month. I’d love for you to watch it:
I talk to workers who experience similar things every single day, which makes the monthly celebration of large job creation numbers ring a bit hollow to me. Sure, it’s better than contraction, but until we have fair wages and legal protections for the people actually performing those jobs, we don’t deserve to say that our economy is strong.
Tonight, our main story looks at another related trend in the economy, which further underscores the dissonance between big job creation numbers and how working people are experiencing the economy.
by Natalie Meltzer
Last year, when it became apparent that it would be difficult for businesses to bring back workers or hire new ones to toil in low-wage jobs, employers largely took one of two approaches.
Some employers complained bitterly to the press, then begrudgingly improved wages, hours, and working conditions. Others, in a display of true commitment to class war, lobbied state politicians to roll back child labor laws.
While forms of child labor have existed throughout American history, the problem became a major social concern as the nation industrialized and workers moved from farms and home workshops to factories. Many industrialists preferred child workers over adults because they believed they were more docile, less expensive, and less likely to organize.
The first state child labor law was passed in Massachusetts in 1836, requiring children under 15 working in factories to attend school at least 3 months per year.
A century later, the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act prohibited individuals under 14 from working in most industries, restricted hours for young workers on school days, and prohibited individuals under 18 from taking on hazardous work. Today, many states go above and beyond that standard, including regulating the number of hours and how late 16- and 17-year-olds can work.
These restrictions make it more of a hassle for employers to hire younger employees, as they cannot work as many hours or do all of the same work as their adult counterparts.
But amid staffing gaps exacerbated by the pandemic, fast food restaurants began encouraging younger workers to apply for positions last year.
New York Times op-ed columnist Pamela Paul took a break from whining about cancel culture to argue that the best extracurricular is an after-school job and teens being sexually harassment at work is a good thing because it teaches them “how the world works.”
Like the married restaurant owner who pinched me when the mood struck and whispered deeply inappropriate things in my ear. I was less traumatized than flabbergasted. Most 15-year-olds today are probably not as naïve as I was, but even they can learn surprising things about supposedly adult behavior and what they’re prepared to put up with and what they swear they’ll never do if they’re ever in a position of authority. You learn how the world works, for better and for worse, and how you might like to change that world.
I’d like to see Paul say that to the 14-year-old girl raped by her McDonald’s manager who was a convicted child sex offender, only to have the company argue it did not have a legal duty to care for and protect her because she was a franchise employee not directly employed by McDonald’s.
And while it is possible to hire high school students in a balanced manner that complies with the law, many employers are violating not only the restrictions on the number of hours teens are allowed to work but are also employing pre-teens and forcing young people to take on dangerous tasks.
Last month, Reuters published a shocking report that migrant children as young as 12 and 13 were toiling at a Hyundai-owned Alabama auto parts plant. The news agency and local police learned of underage workers at the facility after a 13-year-old girl who worked at the factory and was not attending school briefly disappeared in February of this year.
After locating the girl and learning that she was employed at the factory, the local police force, which does not have jurisdiction over labor-law violations in the plant, notified the Alabama attorney general’s office about the use of child labor at the plant.
But it appears the issue of forced child labor was not a priority for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall: the state’s Department of Labor said that that they had not been aware of the allegations before the Reuters investigation was published nearly five months after the police learned about the issue.
And the use of child labor is not an isolated incident.
After the revelations in Alabama, the federal Department of Labor noted an increase in child labor investigations and violations since 2015, including the tragic deaths of three young workers last year and a May 2022 death of a 16-year-old working construction. The department announced that they would ramp up employer outreach and enforcement actions to stem the issue.
At the same time, we're seeing legislative efforts to increase the use of child labor to create slack in the labor market.
Earlier this year, with the trucking industry facing a shortage of qualified drivers, Congress lowered the minimum age for driving a big rig across state lines from 21 to 18. And legislatures in several states have pushed for loosening child labor laws.
Last year, Wisconsin’s Senate passed a bill that would allow teens under 16 to work until 9:30 p.m. on school nights, and up to 11 p.m. when the next day isn't a school day. It didn’t move past that stage, but there’s no reason to think that it wouldn’t come back in a full Republican administration — in fact, similar laws have passed through blue states.
On July 5, New Jersey’s governor signed a bill that expands legal working hours for teens, allowing some to work more than 40 hours per week.
This is deeply troubling as students return to the classroom. Last year, Pennsylvania teenager Darcy Leight published an op-ed arguing that the staffing issues were forcing teens to work more and longer hours even during the academic year. An excerpt:
“This past summer, I decided to get my first job. It began as just a few days a week, and slowly morphed into a weekend gig. But a job I intended to work strictly during the summer has somehow found its way into my fall schedule and has become almost equivalent to academics on my priority list. The reasons so many teens have decided to hold onto jobs during the school year varies. For some, the extra money is a necessity. For others, it’s a result of the understaffing issue itself. Establishments are so desperate for workers, many teens are feeling bad for frazzled coworkers and are choosing to pick up the extra shifts to lessen the collective load.”
Every time that a teenager has no choice but to divert their attention away from their education, their social lives, and their personal development in order to make end’s meet, it’s a tragedy. Every time that a teenager is forced to work because a corporation wants to pad its profits and lawmakers are happy to facilitate that greed, it’s an outrage.
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