There is a coordinated, nationwide effort to roll back child labor laws, part of a broader campaign to concentrate even more power into the hands of employers.
“Since 2021,” the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute notes, “28 states have introduced bills to weaken child labor laws, and 12 states have enacted them.” In 2024 alone, eight states have either introduced or taken new action on bills that would, for example, allow employers to schedule 16- and 17-year-olds for unlimited hours, allow nonprofits to hire 12- and 13-year-olds and eliminate work permits for young people altogether.
One way to understand this fight to roll back labor laws is as a function of conservative ideology and a reflection of the views of the social base of Republican politics. It’s almost axiomatic that a party dominated by reactionary business owners is going to support, as much as possible, the interests of reactionary business owners.
But this analysis can take us only so far. We also have to explain why it is, on a practical level, that this agenda has advanced so far and so fast. There is partisan control, of course — Republicans are leading the assault on labor laws — but there is also the class composition of our state legislatures.
Out of more than 7,300 state legislators in the country, 116 — or 1.6% of the total — currently or last worked in manual labor, the service industry, or in clerical or union jobs, according to a recent study conducted by Nicholas Carnes and Eric Hansen, who are political scientists at Duke University and Loyola University Chicago. By contrast, about 50% of all U.S. workers hold jobs in one of those fields.
This problem afflicts both parties. In the last legislative session, the study found, 1% of Republican lawmakers and 2% of Democratic lawmakers had working-class backgrounds. In 10 states — Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia — not a single state lawmaker works or has recently worked in an occupation that researchers would define as working class. Three of those states, incidentally, are ones in which lawmakers have recently loosened rules on child labor.
What explains the almost total absence of working-class people from elected positions in state government? It may have something to do with how we structure our legislatures. Let’s look at Congress as a baseline. Both the House and Senate are full-time legislatures with considerable staffs and resources at their disposal. Members work through the year and are paid accordingly: $174,000 per annum, with pay increases for those in leadership positions.
Now, there is a case to make that Congress needs more staff and higher pay — that to attract the best candidates for federal office, compensation should be competitive with salaries in private-sector fields of similar power, prestige and responsibility. The main point, however, is that Congress is at least structured in a way that would make it possible for a working-class person to do the job without jeopardizing his or her financial security (although this still leaves us with the problem of actually winning a seat).
You cannot say the same for most of our state legislatures. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, only 10 states have full-time state legislatures, in which lawmakers spent at least 84% of their time engaged in the position, from time spent on the legislative floor to time spent in hearings, committee meetings and on constituent service. They are paid full-time salaries as well, with average compensation of about $82,000. On the other end, there are 14 states where the job is essentially part-time and lawmakers are paid accordingly, earning an average salary of just over $18,000. The remaining states are classified as hybrid legislatures, in which lawmakers devote about 74% of their time to legislative duties, with an average salary around $41,000.
Setting aside the difficulty of getting elected — the necessity of raising money from wealthy friends, family and acquaintances that most Americans simply do not have — if a working-class person of modest means somehow won a state legislative position, she would almost certainly have to sacrifice a large part of her income to do so. Our legislatures are not built to allow working people to participate as members. Neither, for that matter, is our political system writ large.
It is not too difficult to imagine the changes that might make our elected institutions, including Congress, more inclusive of working people. We would need, for example, a stronger and more robust system of campaign finance. We would need resources to move more legislatures to full-time status, including funds for more staff and higher salaries. And we would need the kinds of accommodations that, frankly, all Americans deserve: child care, housing and good health insurance.
The problem is that all of this runs counter to our ingrained hostility to politics and politicians — our cynical distrust, even contempt, for people who choose to make a career of elected office. We don’t want to raise their pay or give them more of what they need to do their jobs well; we want to cut as much as we can and impose term limits while we’re at it.
In this way, we get the legislatures — and legislators — that we pay for: a whole lot of wealthy people interested in pursuing their own goals and not much else.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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