Where Can You Work at 14 in Virginia: Jobs, Hours, and Permits

If you are 14 years old in Virginia, you can work in retail stores, restaurants, and offices, along with a few other service jobs, but you need a Youth Employment Certificate before your first shift. Virginia sets a hard floor at age 14 for any gainful employment, and workers under 16 face strict limits on hours, tasks, and equipment.¹ Get the paperwork sorted first, and the rest is just finding a place that will hire you.

Jobs You Can Take at 14

Virginia follows the federal Fair Labor Standards Act when it comes to which jobs are open to 14- and 15-year-olds.² In practical terms, that leaves three main areas where you’ll find work:

Office and clerical jobs: filing, answering phones, data entry, photocopying, and running standard office machines.³
Retail: cashiering, stocking shelves, tagging prices, bagging purchases, and carrying out customer orders.³
Food service: preparing and serving food, washing dishes, cleaning kitchen equipment, and running basic machines like dishwashers, toasters, and microwaves used only to warm prepared food. You can move containers of hot grease or oil only if the temperature stays at or below 100°F.³

Fast-food counters and family restaurants are the most common first employers. Grocery stores and seasonal tourist shops hire teens regularly too. The job title matters less than the actual tasks. An employer cannot give you a safe-sounding role and then put you on prohibited equipment.

Work and Tasks That Are Off-Limits

Virginia bans anyone under 18 from a long list of hazardous occupations. At 14, you are nowhere near aging out of those bans. The prohibited work includes:

Mining, quarrying, tunneling, and underground scaffolding
Running power-driven machinery like circular saws, band saws, metal-forming machines, woodworking machines, bakery machines, and grinding or polishing equipment⁴
Demolition, roofing, wrecking, and excavation
Manufacturing explosives, paints, white lead, or brick and tile products
Any work with dangerous or poisonous chemicals
Any plant or site that manufactures, stores, or handles explosives or radioactive materials⁴

Driving and Riding as a Helper

No one under 18 can work as a driver or helper on an automobile, truck, or commercial vehicle. Virginia has a narrow exception for some 17-year-olds, but nothing at 14.⁴ So if a potential employer mentions delivery runs, that job isn’t available to you.

Places That Sell Alcohol

Minors under 18 generally cannot work where alcoholic beverages are manufactured, bottled, or sold for on-premises consumption. There are exceptions for certain licensed restaurants and for businesses where alcohol sales are incidental, but even in those settings, a minor cannot serve or dispense alcohol.⁴ A restaurant hostess or busser role may be fine; a bar job is not.

How Many Hours You Can Work

Virginia’s hour limits for workers under 16 track the federal FLSA standards.⁵ They split by whether school is in session.

During the school year:

No more than 3 hours on a school day
No more than 18 hours in a school week
Work only between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

When school is out (summer, winter break, spring break):

Up to 8 hours per day
Up to 40 hours per week
From June 1 through Labor Day, you can work until 9 p.m.

You cannot work during school hours at 14 unless you’re enrolled in an approved school work-training program with a separate work-training certificate.¹

If you work more than five hours straight, Virginia requires at least a 30-minute meal break. Anything shorter than 30 minutes doesn’t count and won’t reset the clock on continuous work time.⁵ This comes up most in summer, when a full eight-hour shift is possible. A schedule that runs you six hours straight with no break is a violation.

Getting Your Youth Employment Certificate

Every 14- and 15-year-old worker in Virginia has to get a Youth Employment Certificate before performing any work. You cannot start even a single shift without one.⁶ The Virginia Department of Labor and Industry (DOLI) issues the certificate through an online portal.

The application has three parts, filled in by three different people in order:

You start by registering yourself with your personal information. The portal gives you a Youth ID number.⁷
You give the Youth ID to your employer. They log in, enter your Youth ID and date of birth, add their business details, job description, and your schedule, and submit.
Your parent or guardian then logs in with the same Youth ID and your date of birth, completes their portion, signs off on the arrangement, and submits.⁷

Once all three parts are in, a DOLI Compliance Officer reviews the application, usually within about 24 hours. The certificate becomes valid only after you sign it. Your employer has to keep that signed certificate on file along with your time records and proof of age. Any labor inspection will ask for them.⁶

Work That Doesn’t Require a Certificate

A few kinds of work are exempt from Virginia’s child labor chapter, so no employment certificate is needed:

Chores at your own home for your parent or legal guardian⁸
Occasional odd jobs at a neighbor’s home, like mowing lawns, raking leaves, or babysitting, as long as the work is outside school hours and not tied to the neighbor’s business⁸
Working for a parent’s business, in any occupation other than manufacturing, if you are under 16⁸
Content creation work, provided an adult supervises and you are not exposed to hazardous equipment or conditions⁸

Even exempt work still has to stay within Virginia’s hazardous-occupation bans. A parent who runs a landscaping company can hire their 14-year-old, but the teen still cannot operate power-driven machinery or do roofing.

What You’ll Get Paid, and Whether You Owe Taxes

Virginia’s minimum wage rises to $12.77 per hour on January 1, 2026, and it applies to most employees regardless of age.⁹ There is no separate sub-minimum training wage for minors in Virginia. If an employer offers you less than $12.77 an hour, that’s worth raising with your parent and, if it goes nowhere, with DOLI.

Earning a paycheck at 14 doesn’t automatically mean you need to file a tax return. For tax year 2026, the federal standard deduction for a single filer is $16,100.¹⁰ Given the hour limits, most 14-year-olds won’t come close to earning that much in a year, so you likely won’t owe federal income tax. Virginia requires single residents with Virginia adjusted gross income of $11,950 or more to file a state return.¹¹ Even below those amounts, filing a return is the only way to claim back any taxes that were withheld from your paychecks. A lot of teens leave that money sitting with the IRS.

If Something Goes Wrong on the Job

Child labor penalties in Virginia fall on the employer, not on you. An employer who hires a minor in violation of the rules faces civil penalties from $500 to $2,500 per violation, climbing to as much as $25,000 if a child is seriously injured or killed.¹²

If you notice something off, like being scheduled past 7 p.m. on a school night, being told to use prohibited equipment, or being put to work before your certificate is signed, you or your parent can report it directly through the DOLI website.¹³ Most 14-year-olds won’t file a complaint on their own, so parents should know this option is there.

1
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 40.1-78 – Employment of Children Under Fourteen and Sixteen
2
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 40.1-80.1 – Employment of Children
3
eCFR. 29 CFR 570.34 – Occupations That May Be Performed by Minors 14 and 15 Years of Age
4
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 40.1-100 – Certain Employment Prohibited or Limited
5
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 40.1-80.1 – Employment of Children
6
Virginia Department of Labor and Industry. Youth Employment
7
Virginia Department of Labor and Industry. DOLI Quick Start – Child Labor Application Portal Guide
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Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 40.1-79.01 – Exemptions From Chapter Generally
9
Virginia Department of Labor and Industry. Virginia Minimum Wage Rate Increasing Effective January 1, 2026
10
IRS. IRS Releases Tax Inflation Adjustments for Tax Year 2026
11
Virginia Department of Taxation. Who Must File
12
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 40.1-113 – Child Labor Offenses; Civil Penalties
13
Virginia Department of Labor and Industry. Labor Law