The Labor Department let its child-labor task force die as violations rose
A GAO report (GAO-26-107722, September 2026) found the Wage and Hour Division cited 44,857 child labor violations from fiscal 2015 through 2025, with violations and affected children generally rising, while 260 children under 18 died in work-related incidents from 2013 through 2023 — yet DOL does not publish cause-of-death or industry detail for many of those deaths and changed its injury data so post-2021 figures cannot be compared with earlier years. GAO found that since January 2025 DOL's interagency collaboration on child labor 'has largely diminished': the Interagency Task Force to Combat Child Labor last met in June 2024 and ceased operating after the 2025 leadership transition, and WHD's data-sharing agreement with HHS's children's agency expired in March 2026 without renewal. DOL generally disagreed with GAO's recommendation to mitigate the data gaps and neither agreed nor disagreed with a recommendation to assess its employer outreach.
IATF ceased operation. The last documented meeting of the IATF was in June 2024... WHD's memorandum of agreement to share data with HHS' ACF expired in March 2026.
DOL generally disagreed with the data gaps recommendation, neither agreed nor disagreed with the outreach recommendation, and agreed with the three other recommendations.
Contacted and responded — exact wording not on record.
No outcome recorded yet.