Florida to consider relaxing child labour laws to fill vacant jobs

[toomuchtodo]

Bit of a wild model here. The US, broadly speaking, is going through a labor shortage that will only get worse in the future (structural demographics). Immigration was filling the gap for the last half decade or so, but with anti immigration sentiment rising, this will exacerbate the situation. So, some political parties have decided to employ children as young as 14 in potentially dangerous occupations. It's not great, and as it's politics, there aren't any solutions besides "vote better," which the electorate appears to be not so interested in.

Probably an opportunity for a ProPublica series to track the harm and death toll that will eventually result.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/despite-hazardous-working-conditio...

https://www.axios.com/2024/03/13/immigration-economy-jobs-gr...

https://www.axios.com/2023/05/08/us-labor-shortage-older-wor...

https://www.hamiltonproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2...

https://assets-global.website-files.com/5cd5801dfdf7e5927800...

[lnxg33k1]

I feel structural demographic is getting older because salaries and job safety are shrinking due to immigration

[jerlam]

The US Chamber of Commerce [...] named Florida as one of the states where the situation is severe, counting only 53 available workers for every 100 open jobs.

Here is the study: https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/the-states-suffering-mos...

[lesuorac]

Of course an industry trade group (US Chamber of Commerce isn't a USG organization [1]) is advocating for lower paid children to be employees.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Chamber_of_Comme...

[Kon-Peki]

It’s not like there is a huge pool of teenagers who would be out taking these jobs if the law allowed them to take them.

It makes very little sense at all, unless the next step after this is to make government assistance conditioned on family work seeking.

[seanmcdirmid]

ok, Florida's rules are already pretty lax, it seems like the new law would just allow them to work after 11PM on a school night and they can start work before 6:30 AM. WTF!

I'm all for letting kids work, but that just seems ridiculous.

[evanjrowley]

Growing up in Florida, my parents would not let me mow the lawn because they believed child labor laws meant they could potentially get in trouble for it. Regardless of the likelihood of legal action as a result of this, the fact is there was a perception among Floridians in the 1990s / 2000s that child labor laws may be overly strict.

[seanmcdirmid]

Yes, they obviously prevent kids from working from 11PM to 6:30AM on a school night/day. But that is so so so so mellow compared to what we have up here in Washington state.