Indiana Child Labor Laws: Hours, YES System, and Penalties

Indiana’s child labor laws changed substantially on January 1, 2025. The state removed all work-hour and curfew restrictions for 16- and 17-year-olds, kept tight scheduling limits for 14- and 15-year-olds, and scrapped school-issued work permits in favor of an employer-managed digital registry called the Youth Employment System, or YES. Federal hazardous-occupation rules and a break requirement for minors still apply.

Hours for 14- and 15-Year-Olds

The youngest working minors face Indiana’s strictest scheduling rules. On a school day, a 14- or 15-year-old can work up to three hours, and 18 hours total across a school week. On non-school days the daily cap rises to eight hours, and during weeks when school is out entirely they can work up to 40 hours.¹

Time-of-day limits are just as specific. No shift can start before 7:00 a.m. or end after 7:00 p.m. From June 1 through Labor Day, the evening cutoff extends to 9:00 p.m.² After Labor Day the 7:00 p.m. limit returns whether or not the local school year has started.

Any employer who hires a 14- or 15-year-old must also post a printed notice in a visible spot listing the maximum daily hours and the start and end times for each workday.³

What Changed for 16- and 17-Year-Olds

This is the heart of the 2025 overhaul. Indiana eliminated every hour and scheduling restriction that had applied to 16- and 17-year-olds. There is no daily cap, no weekly cap, and no nighttime curfew. They can be scheduled the same as any adult employee, and parental permission is no longer part of that calculation.¹

Under the prior rules, these workers were capped at nine hours a day and 40 hours during school weeks, with a 10:00 p.m. curfew on school nights that a parent could extend to 11:00 p.m. in writing. None of that remains. A 17-year-old assigned to a midnight closing shift during the school year is now working legally in Indiana.⁴

What remains for older teens is the break rule below, the federal hazardous-occupation list, and federal overtime pay once weekly hours cross 40.

Break Requirements for Minors

Indiana does not require breaks for adult employees. Minors get different treatment. Any worker under 18 who is scheduled for six or more consecutive hours must receive at least 30 minutes of break time, which can be taken as one break or split into two.⁵ This applies to 16- and 17-year-olds too, even though they are otherwise scheduled like adults. Document when the break is taken. Investigators treat a missing record as a missing break.

Employer Registration in the YES System

School-issued work permits are gone. In their place, any employer with five or more workers between the ages of 14 and 17 must register through the Indiana Department of Labor’s Youth Employment System.⁶ Schools have no role in tracking minor employees anymore.

Registration is digital. The employer builds a profile, then enters each minor’s name, age, and hire date. Updates on locations and the number of minors at each site are due by the 15th and the last business day of every month.⁷ When a minor leaves, the employer removes that worker from the system.⁶

Prohibited and Hazardous Jobs

Indiana enforces the federal Hazardous Occupation Orders, which bar anyone under 18 from 17 categories of dangerous work. The Indiana Bureau of Youth Employment enforces these federal restrictions at the state level.⁸ Categories that most often surface in ordinary teen jobs include:

Manufacturing or storing explosives, though selling ammunition in a retail store is allowed.
Driving on public roads for work, or riding as an outside helper on a vehicle, with narrow exceptions for 17-year-olds.
Operating power-driven woodworking machines, metal-forming equipment, hoisting equipment such as forklifts and scissor lifts, and meat-processing machines like slicers and saws.
Cleaning the disassembled parts of meat-processing equipment, which applies even when the machine is used for cheese or vegetables rather than meat.⁹
Power-driven bakery machines: dough mixers, rollers, dividers, and sheeters.
Work involving radioactive materials or ionizing radiation.
Roofing, demolition, and excavation.
Most work in coal mines, metal mines, quarries, and logging.

Fourteen- and 15-year-olds face a longer list. Beyond the categories above, they cannot work in manufacturing, construction, or any setting that involves cooking or baking with commercial equipment.⁸

Driving on the Job

On-the-job driving is one of the most commonly misunderstood areas. Federal Hazardous Occupation Order No. 2 generally bars anyone under 18 from driving a motor vehicle on public roads as part of a job. A 17-year-old can drive for work only if every one of the following is true:¹⁰

Driving happens only between sunrise and sunset.
The minor holds a valid state license for that type of driving.
The minor has no moving violations at the time of hire and has completed a state-approved driver education course.
The vehicle’s gross weight is 6,000 pounds or less.
The vehicle has seat belts for driver and all passengers, and the employer has instructed the minor to use them.
Driving takes no more than one-third of any workday and no more than 20 percent of weekly work time.

Even when all of that is met, a 17-year-old still cannot deliver pizza or other food, tow vehicles, carry more than three passengers, drive beyond 30 miles from the workplace, or run any route delivery. Assigning delivery work without confirming each condition exposes the employer to hazardous-occupation penalties.

Exemptions

Some work a young person does sits outside Indiana’s youth employment chapter. Farm labor by 14- and 15-year-olds is exempt from the standard hour restrictions. So is casual domestic work like babysitting or chores for a neighbor. Golf caddies are specifically exempt, and minors as young as 12 can officiate at youth athletic events as referees or umpires.¹¹

Indiana also allows an agricultural exemption from certain hazardous-occupation rules. A minor 14 or older who has completed a 4-H tractor training program or a vocational agriculture safety course can operate farm tractors and farm machinery if the employer keeps the training certification on file.⁸ Under federal law, children of any age may work on a farm owned or operated by their parent or guardian, and newspaper delivery and acting sit outside federal child labor coverage for workers under 14.⁹

Wages and Overtime

Indiana’s minimum wage matches the federal rate of $7.25 per hour, and minors earn the same base pay as adults. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act allows a training wage of $4.25 per hour for workers under 20 during their first 90 consecutive calendar days on the job. After 90 days, or when the worker turns 20, the full minimum wage applies.

Full-time students working in retail, service, agriculture, or at a college or university may be paid 85 percent of minimum wage, roughly $6.16 per hour, for up to 20 hours per week when school is in session and up to 40 hours when it is not.

Overtime rules do not bend for age. Any minor who works more than 40 hours in a workweek must be paid one and a half times the regular rate.¹² For 16- and 17-year-olds without state-level hour caps, that overtime threshold is the main financial guardrail against heavy scheduling.

Penalties for Violations

Indiana uses a tiered penalty system that escalates with repeated offenses. A first violation in any category triggers a warning letter rather than a fine. The Department of Labor tracks violations over a rolling two-year window, so an employer with two clean years resets to the initial warning tier.¹³

Hour violations under 30 minutes carry the lightest fines: warning for a first violation, $50 for a second, $75 for a third, and $100 per instance for a fourth or later.

Hour violations over 30 minutes, hazardous-occupation violations, and registration failures follow a steeper schedule: warning for a first, $100 for a second, $200 for a third, and $400 per instance thereafter. Registration failures alone can range from $100 to $400 per violation depending on prior citations.¹³

These state amounts sit well below federal child labor penalties, which can reach tens of thousands of dollars per violation. Indiana’s fines are assessed per instance, though, so an employer who schedules six minors past legal hours in the same week can face six separate penalties. The larger cost is usually the investigation itself.

1
Indiana Department of Labor. Youth Employment Home
2
U.S. Department of Labor. Selected State Child Labor Standards Affecting Minors Under 18 in Non-Farm Employment
3
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 22-2-18.1-22 – Employer Required to Post Notice
4
Indiana Department of Labor. Changes to Youth Employment Laws
5
IN.gov. Is There Any Information Regarding Indiana Lunch or Breaks Laws
6
Indiana Department of Labor. Youth Employment System (YES)
7
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 22-2-18.1-26 – Employer Data Base Registration
8
Indiana Department of Labor. Prohibited and Hazardous Occupations for Minors
9
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 43 – Child Labor Provisions of the FLSA for Nonagricultural Occupations
10
U.S. Department of Labor. Fact Sheet 34 – Hazardous Occupations Order No. 2 Youth Employment Provision and Driving Automobiles and Trucks Under the FLSA
11
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 22-2-18.1-16 – Employment of Minors Less Than 16 Years of Age
12
U.S. Department of Labor. Wages and the Fair Labor Standards Act
13
Indiana Department of Labor. Fees, Fines, and Penalties