Can You Work at 13 in Georgia? Hours, Permits, and Limits

Yes, you can work at 13 in Georgia, but only in a short list of jobs that federal law specifically exempts from the standard minimum working age of 14. Those are newspaper delivery, acting or performing, working in a business owned solely by a parent, and non-hazardous work on a farm. Casual babysitting and neighborhood jobs like lawn mowing sit outside employment law entirely. Anything else — a shift at a restaurant, a stocking job at a store, a role at a summer camp run by strangers — has to wait until 14 at the earliest, and most of it until 16.

Jobs a 13-Year-Old Can Legally Hold

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act sets 14 as the general floor for non-agricultural work, then carves out specific exemptions where younger teens can be employed. Those exemptions are where every legal job for a 13-year-old in Georgia comes from.

Newspaper delivery. Selling or delivering newspapers to customers is one of the oldest FLSA exemptions. Georgia allows minors under 16 to deliver newspapers in residential areas between 5:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m., but not during school hours.
Acting and performing. The FLSA exempts child actors and performers in movies, television, theater, and radio. Georgia has its own regulations for minors in entertainment, which define “minor” as anyone under 18.¹²
A parent’s business. A 13-year-old can work in a business owned solely by their parent, as long as the job isn’t in manufacturing, mining, or an occupation declared hazardous.
Agriculture. Federal law lets 12- and 13-year-olds work on farms in non-hazardous roles outside school hours, provided a parent gives written consent or works on the same farm.¹
Employers not covered by the FLSA. Georgia’s state minimum age is 12 for employers outside FLSA coverage. In practice, almost every business with some connection to interstate commerce is covered, so this category is small.³

Outside these categories, a 13-year-old cannot hold a formal job in Georgia. Parental permission doesn’t change that.

Informal Work That Sits Outside Employment Law

Plenty of 13-year-olds earn money in ways that never create an employer-employee relationship in the legal sense. Casual babysitting is the biggest one. Federal regulations treat babysitting as “casual” when it runs fewer than 20 hours a week across all families and isn’t a full-time occupation.⁴ Mowing lawns, raking leaves, pet sitting, and similar neighborhood work also fall outside FLSA coverage when the teen is operating on their own rather than for a landscaping or pet care company.

Social media and YouTube content sits in a gray area. The FLSA’s child-performer exemption has generally been read to cover this kind of work, but the line between a kid posting videos for fun and a monetized channel generating real income isn’t sharp. Georgia has not passed a child-influencer statute. Parents managing a monetized account should know that substantial, regular income can pull the arrangement into employment-law territory.

Volunteering is possible for a 13-year-old, with one catch: volunteering for a nonprofit’s charitable activities is fine, but “volunteering” at a commercial operation the nonprofit runs, like a gift shop, generally isn’t. The Department of Labor requires that real volunteers work freely, without expecting pay, and without displacing paid staff.⁵

How Many Hours a 13-Year-Old Can Work

Georgia sets hour limits on every worker under 16. State law caps work at four hours on a school day, eight hours on a non-school day, and 40 hours in any week. No work is allowed between 9:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.⁶

For farm work, the key federal rule is that 12- and 13-year-olds can only work outside school hours.¹ There’s no federal daily or weekly cap on farm hours for this age group, so Georgia’s under-16 caps carry most of the weight.

Neither Georgia nor federal law requires an employer to give a minor a rest break or a meal break. Federal rules only require that breaks under 20 minutes be paid if the employer chooses to offer them. Parents are often surprised by this.

Jobs That Are Off Limits

Georgia bans anyone under 16 from working in a mill, factory, laundry, manufacturing facility, or workshop, and from any occupation the state Commissioner of Labor has declared hazardous.⁶ Federal Hazardous Occupation Orders add another layer that reaches all the way up to age 18: no one under 18 can work in mining, roofing, excavation, demolition, or logging, and no one under 18 can operate power-driven equipment like forklifts, circular saws, band saws, meat-processing machines, or bakery machines.⁷ Jobs involving radioactive materials, driving a motor vehicle as part of the work, or making brick and tile products are also prohibited.⁸

Agriculture has its own hazardous-occupation list that applies to workers under 16. It covers operating a tractor over 20 horsepower, working in a silo, and handling certain pesticides, among other things. One exception: a child of any age can do hazardous farm work on a farm owned or operated by their parent.¹

The Work Permit Requirement

Georgia requires an Employment Certificate, usually called a work permit, for every working minor who hasn’t turned 16.⁹ That includes 13-year-olds in any of the exempt job categories. Without the certificate, neither the teen nor the employer can legally proceed.

The process runs in two stages. The minor starts a work permit data sheet online or on paper, and the employer fills in their section with the job duties and scheduled hours. The minor then brings the completed data sheet, along with proof of age (a birth certificate is standard), to an issuing officer for review.⁹

The issuing officer is typically a designated administrator at the minor’s school, the principal of a licensed private school, or someone at the county school superintendent’s office. Homeschooled students and out-of-state minors go directly to the county superintendent’s office with their birth certificate. There is no fee. Once approved, the issuing officer prints the paper certificate, and the minor gives it to the employer before starting work.

What the Job Has to Pay

Georgia’s state minimum wage is $5.15 per hour, but any employer covered by the FLSA has to pay the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour instead.¹⁰ Most employers are FLSA-covered, so $7.25 is what most 13-year-olds will actually earn.

The FLSA also allows a youth wage of $4.25 per hour for workers under 20 during their first 90 consecutive calendar days with a new employer.¹¹ Those 90 days are calendar days, not workdays, so the window closes quickly. After it ends, pay has to rise to at least $7.25. An employer can’t fire an existing worker or cut their hours to bring in someone at the youth rate.

Farm wages work differently. Small farms that didn’t use more than 500 person-days of agricultural labor in any calendar quarter of the prior year are exempt from the federal minimum wage, so a 13-year-old working on one may legally earn less than $7.25 per hour.

Taxes on a First Paycheck

Earning money at 13 doesn’t automatically mean filing a tax return. For the 2025 tax year, a dependent with earned income above $15,750 has to file a federal return.¹² That number adjusts each year. Most 13-year-olds working limited hours won’t come close, but a child actor with a real role could.

Even under the filing threshold, an employer will withhold federal income tax from a minor’s paycheck unless the minor claims exempt status on the W-4, which is available when the minor had no tax liability the prior year and expects none this year. Social Security and Medicare taxes apply to minor employees just like adult ones, with one exception: a child under 18 employed by a parent’s sole proprietorship, or by a partnership in which both partners are the child’s parents, is exempt from FICA withholding.¹³ The exemption doesn’t apply if the business is a corporation or only one parent is a partner.

Money from informal work like babysitting and lawn care is still taxable income to the IRS, even without a W-2. A 13-year-old earning a few hundred dollars over a summer won’t owe anything in practice, but the obligation exists on paper.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 29 USC 213 – Exemptions
2
Georgia Secretary of State. Georgia Rules and Regulations 300-7-1 – Minors in Entertainment
3
Georgia Department of Labor. Child Labor Minimum Age Requirements
4
eCFR. 29 CFR 552.104 – Babysitting Services Performed on a Casual Basis
5
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 14A – Non-Profit Organizations and the Fair Labor Standards Act
6
Justia Law. Georgia Code 39-2-1 – Restrictions on Employment of Minors Under 16 Years of Age Generally
7
U.S. Department of Labor. What Jobs Are Off-Limits for Kids
8
eCFR. 29 CFR Part 570 – Child Labor Regulations, Orders and Statements of Interpretation
9
Georgia Department of Labor. Child Labor Employment Certificate Instructions
10
Georgia Department of Labor. Minimum Wage
11
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 32 – Youth Minimum Wage – Fair Labor Standards Act
12
Internal Revenue Service. Check if You Need to File a Tax Return
13
Internal Revenue Service. Family Employees