Scheduling under-18s in the US: the hour rules that change your rota

Why this is a scheduling problem, not an HR problem

Most compliance rules are checked once and filed. The under-18 rules are different: they change what a legal shift looks like, day by day, for one person on a rota of twenty. A manager building next week has to hold in their head that Maya is 15, that Tuesday is a school day so she caps at 3 hours, that Saturday she can do 8, that the whole week caps at 18, and that none of it can start before 7am or run past 7pm. Until June 1, when the evening moves to 9pm.

That is not a policy question. That is a constraint on the grid.

The federal rules, by age

14 and 15 year olds. Work must fall outside school hours, and is limited to:

• 3 hours on a school day
• 18 hours in a school week
• 8 hours on a non-school day
• 40 hours in a non-school week
• and between 7am and 7pm, extended to 9pm from June 1 through Labor Day

There is one narrow exception: youth enrolled in an approved Work Experience and Career Exploration Program may work up to 23 hours in a school week and 3 hours on a school day, including during school hours.

16 and 17 year olds. No federal limit on hours at all. They may work any non-hazardous job for as many hours as you schedule. The constraint at this age is the kind of work: the FLSA sets an 18 year minimum for the occupations the Secretary of Labor has declared hazardous, currently 17 of them.

18 and over. No federal youth employment provisions apply.

All of it is set out in the Department of Labor's Fact Sheet #43. If you run a restaurant or a quick-service counter, there is a version written for you: Fact Sheet #2A.

The rule people miss: your state may be stricter

Where both the FLSA child labor provisions and a state child labor law apply, the higher minimum standard is the one to obey. Federal law is a floor, not a ceiling, and plenty of states sit above it, sometimes with a work permit requirement on top.

So the question is never "what does federal law allow". It is "what do federal and my state law allow, and which is tighter".

Where the schedule actually breaks

The school day cap, on a day nobody thought was a school day. Teacher training days, early closures, the week either side of a holiday. The cap follows the school calendar of the district where the young person lives, not the store's sense of what a normal week looks like.

The 18 hour week, reached on Thursday. Three hours Monday to Thursday is twelve. Friday brings fifteen. Saturday at 8 hours would be twenty-three. The Saturday shift that looked generous is the one that breaks the week, and nobody notices while placing it.

The curfew that moves. A 6pm to 9pm shift is fine on June 2 and unlawful on May 30. One date in the year quietly changes what a legal shift looks like, and a schedule copied from last week carries the old assumption forward.

Copying last week. This is how the three above actually happen. Duplicating a week is the fastest way to build a rota and the fastest way to carry a now-illegal shift into a new context.

How to build it into the rota

Record the date of birth, not just the age. Age changes mid-year, and a rule that turns off on someone's 16th birthday needs the date to know.

Mark the school calendar once, at the start of the term, so the schedule knows which days are school days before anyone places a shift. This is the single input that makes the 3 hour cap enforceable rather than remembered.

Put the June 1 change in the calendar as a scheduling event, not an HR note. It is the one date that changes the shape of an evening shift.

And check the running weekly total for under-16s on Wednesday, not on Sunday. Same principle as overtime: once the week is worked, the choice is gone.

In practice

Under-18 scheduling is the clearest case for letting the tool hold the rules. A human manager can remember one 15 year old. Across three stores and a summer of seasonal hires, nobody can. Squadra keeps the schedule and the clocked hours in the same place, so a week is totalled as it is built rather than after the fact. See what the break rules add on top, and pricing.

Check your own state's child labor rules alongside the federal ones. The stricter of the two is the one that governs your rota.