How Many Hours Can a 17-Year-Old Work in Georgia?

In Georgia, a 17-year-old can work as many hours as the employer schedules. There is no state or federal cap on daily hours, weekly hours, consecutive days, or overnight shifts for workers who are 16 or 17.¹ A 17-year-old’s schedule is treated the same as any adult employee’s. The real legal limits at this age aren’t about the clock; they’re about which jobs are off-limits until 18.

No Cap on Hours, Days, or Nights

The Georgia Department of Labor says it plainly: 16- and 17-year-olds have no work-hour restrictions under state or federal law.¹ That covers every piece of the schedule a parent or teen might ask about:

No daily maximum. A 17-year-old can work a 10- or 12-hour shift.
No weekly maximum. 50- or 60-hour weeks are legal if the employer offers them.
No limit on consecutive days worked.
No nightwork curfew. Closing shifts, overnight stocking, and early-morning openings are all permitted.

This is a sharp break from the rules for younger teens. Under federal law, 14- and 15-year-olds cannot work more than 3 hours on a school day, 8 hours on a non-school day, or 18 hours during a school week. Those caps disappear at 16 in Georgia and do not return.

School attendance isn’t a legal obstacle either. Georgia’s compulsory attendance law applies only to children between their sixth and sixteenth birthdays, so a 17-year-old can work mid-day shifts without any state attendance conflict, whether still enrolled or already graduated.²

Breaks Aren’t Required

Federal law does not require employers to give meal or rest breaks to workers of any age, and Georgia adds nothing to that rule for minors.³ A 17-year-old on an 8-hour shift has no legal entitlement to a lunch break, though most employers provide one. When short breaks of 5 to 20 minutes are offered, they count as paid time. Meal breaks of 30 minutes or more can be unpaid as long as the worker is fully relieved of duties.

Jobs a 17-Year-Old Still Cannot Do

Unlimited hours do not mean unlimited job options. Federal law identifies 17 categories of hazardous work that are closed to anyone under 18.⁴ The ones that come up most often in teen hiring include:

Manufacturing, transporting, or storing explosives or ammunition
Operating power-driven woodworking, metalworking, bakery, and meat-processing machines, including slicers and grinders
All mining and logging work
Roofing and any work in a trench, pit, or similar excavation
Operating forklifts, cranes, and other hoisting equipment
Wrecking and demolition
Jobs involving exposure to radioactive materials

Narrow exceptions exist for registered apprentices and student-learners in state-approved vocational programs, but the hazardous tasks have to be incidental to training, intermittent, short, and directly supervised, and the apprenticeship has to be formally registered with the U.S. Department of Labor or a recognized state agency.⁴ Without that structure, these jobs are off the table.

Employers who place a minor in a prohibited job face civil penalties of up to $16,035 per worker, rising to $72,876 if the violation causes death or serious injury, and the higher figure can be doubled for willful or repeated violations.⁵

Serving Alcohol

Georgia law prohibits anyone under 18 from serving, selling, or taking orders for alcoholic beverages.⁶ A 17-year-old in a sit-down restaurant cannot take drink orders, mix drinks, or deliver alcohol to a table. Tipped roles are limited to positions like bussing and hosting rather than bartending or cocktail service.

One carve-out: minors under 18 can handle packaged alcohol sold for off-premises consumption at supermarkets, convenience stores, breweries, and drugstores.⁶ Scanning a six-pack at a grocery checkout is legal; pouring a beer at a bar is not.

Driving on the Job

Holding a Georgia driver’s license does not automatically let a 17-year-old drive as part of a job. The general federal rule bars anyone under 18 from driving on the job or riding as an outside helper on a motor vehicle on a public road.⁷

A narrow exemption lets a 17-year-old drive on the job only if every one of the following is true at the same time:⁴

The vehicle weighs no more than 6,000 pounds gross vehicle weight and has seat belts.
Driving happens only during daylight hours.
The teen holds a valid state license with no moving violations at the time of hire.
The teen has completed a state-approved driver education course.
Driving is occasional and incidental: no more than one-third of work time on any day and no more than 20 percent in any week.
No more than two delivery trips per day, within a 30-mile radius of the workplace.
No more than three passengers in the vehicle at any time.

Even with all of that satisfied, time-sensitive deliveries like pizza runs, route deliveries, route sales, and transporting passengers for hire remain prohibited for anyone under 18.⁷ If a job’s core function is driving, a 17-year-old generally cannot do it legally.

Pay and Overtime at 17

Georgia’s state minimum wage is $5.15 per hour, but the federal minimum of $7.25 applies to most employers and overrides the lower state rate.⁸ That $7.25 floor is what a 17-year-old should expect to earn at minimum.

There’s one exception at the start of a new job. Federal law allows employers to pay workers under 20 a youth minimum wage of $4.25 per hour for the first 90 consecutive calendar days of employment.⁹ The 90 days are counted on the calendar, not days actually worked. A teen who starts on June 1 reaches the full rate on August 29 regardless of how many shifts they picked up.

For tipped positions, the federal minimum cash wage is $2.13 per hour with a maximum tip credit of $5.12.¹⁰ The employer has to make sure cash wage plus tips reach at least $7.25 per hour for every workweek; if tips fall short, the employer covers the difference.

Because a 17-year-old has no weekly hour cap, overtime matters. When hours exceed 40 in a single workweek, the employer owes one and a half times the regular rate for every hour past 40.¹¹ A workweek is any fixed 168 consecutive hours. There’s no age-based exception: a 17-year-old earns overtime on the same terms as every other covered employee.

No Work Permit Required at 17

Georgia requires employment certificates only for minors under 16.¹² At 17, no permit is needed from a school, the Georgia Department of Labor, or anyone else. The teen still completes the standard Form I-9 at hiring, with a driver’s license or similar document for identity and a birth certificate or equivalent for work authorization.¹³

1
Georgia Department of Labor. Child Labor Work Hour Restrictions
2
Justia. Georgia Code 20-2-690.1 – Mandatory Education for Children Between Ages Six and 16
3
U.S. Department of Labor. Breaks and Meal Periods
4
eCFR. 29 CFR Part 570 – Child Labor Regulations, Orders and Statements of Interpretation
5
eCFR. 29 CFR Part 579 – Child Labor Violations—Civil Money Penalties
6
Justia. Georgia Code 3-3-24 – Dispensing, Serving, Selling, or Taking Orders for Alcoholic Beverages
7
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #2A – Child Labor Rules for Employing Youth in Restaurants and Quick-Service Establishments Under the FLSA
8
Georgia Department of Labor. Minimum Wage
9
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet #32 – Youth Minimum Wage – Fair Labor Standards Act
10
U.S. Department of Labor. Minimum Wages for Tipped Employees
11
eCFR. 29 CFR Part 778 – Overtime Compensation
12
Justia. Georgia Code 39-2-11 – Employment Certificates – Required; Requirements for Issuance
13
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. List B Documents That Establish Identity