WASHINGTON
The US is witnessing an explosion of child labor violations as legislative overhauls in Republican-majority states seek to remove safeguards intended to prevent a return to what was seen during the Industrial Revolution and Great Depression.
Child labor itself is not a novel problem for the US, but data from the Department of Labor released earlier this year indicates an explosion in violations across the country.
The department tracked a 69% increase in children being employed illegally since 2018, including 3,800 violations across 835 companies in the 2022 fiscal year.
Much of the increase is tied to migrant children who entered the US illegally and who do not have a parent in the country, the department said in February.
Over 600 child labor investigations are ongoing.
Part of the dramatic spike can be explained by a lack of resources that went toward the Labor Department during former President Donald Trump's administration, which in turn may have created a lax enforcement environment, said Debbie Berkowitz, a former chief of staff at the agency's workplace safety office.
"Under the Trump administration, all enforcement was weakened, and the number of inspectors dropped to very low levels," said Berkowitz, who is a former Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) official.
"It is possible that when enforcement was curtailed — especially before and during COVID — by the Trump administration, some low-road employers felt they could get away with...
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