Labor Department

Melissa Spurgeon, Director
Email: [email protected]
Phoenix: 800 W Washington St, Phoenix AZ 85007 - Phone: (602) 542-4515
Tucson: 2675 East Broadway, Tucson AZ 85716 - Phone: (520) 628-5459

Please see A.R.S. § 23-230 for definitions of the occupations listed.

Restrictions For Minors 17 And Under: 

Under Arizona's Youth Employment Law and the Federal Child Labor Law, employers are under the jurisdiction of federal and state agencies. In those cases of dual jurisdiction the more restrictive requirement would apply. If an employer is exempted by either the state or federal law, the nonexempted law would apply. 

• Occupations in the manufacturing or storing of explosives. 
• Occupations as a motor vehicle driver or outside helper. Under the State Law, 16 and 17 year old minors can drive if the total driving time does not exceed two hours per day or 25% of their work day. They also can not drive fifty or more miles per day. 
  The Federal Child Labor Law prohibits 16 and 17 year olds from driving on the job. Contact the Federal Wage and Hour Division for more information 
• Mine and quarry occupations. 
• Logging occupations including, but not limited to occupations in connection with mills. 
• Operation of power-driven woodworking machines. 
• Occupations with exposure to radioactive substances and to ionizing radiation. 
• Operation or the assistance in the operation of a power-driven hoist or an elevator, including, but not limited to forklifts, cranes or derricks. 
• Operation of power-driven metal working, forming, punching or shearing machines. 
• Occupations involving slaughtering, meat packing, processing or rendering of meat, including operation, set-up, repair, adjustment, oiling or cleaning of a power-driven meat processing machine. 
• Occupations involving the operation or cleaning of power-driven bakery machinery. 
• The Federal Child Labor Laws restrict youths under the age of eighteen (18) from the machinery listed in this category. 
• Occupations involving the operation of power-driven paper products machines, including, but not limited to presses, arm-type wirestitchers or staplers, guillotine paper cutters or shears, and scrap paper balers. 
• Occupations involving the manufacture of clay construction products or silica refractory products. 
• Occupations involving the operation and cleaning of power-driven saws. 
• Occupations involving wrecking, demolition and shipbreaking operations, including, but not limited to demolishing or dismantling buildings, bridges, motor vehicles or other structures. 
• Occupations involving roofing operations or equipment attached to or replaced on roofs. 
• Occupations involving excavation or tunnel operations.

Restrictions For Minors 15 And Under:

• Occupations involving manufacturing. 
• Occupations involving processing, including, but not limited to filleting fish, dressing poultry or cracking nuts. 
• Occupations involving laundering or dry cleaning in a commercial laundry. 
• Occupations involving warehousing, including, but not limited to moving items to and from trucks, railroad cars, conveyors and buildings. 
• Occupations involving construction. 
• Occupations involving boilers, furnaces or engine rooms. 
• Occupations involving window washing, work from a ladder, scaffold, window sill or similar structure or place more than five feet in height. 
• Work involving maintenance or repair of the establishment’s machines or equipment, including, but not limited to work involving the inflation of tires mounted on rims equipped with a movable retaining ring. 
• Work involving cooking and baking, including frying and broiling. 
• Work involving the operation, setting up, adjusting, cleaning, oiling or repairing power-driven food slicers, grinders, choppers and cutters. 
• Work involving the preparation of meats for sale. 
• Operating a tractor over twenty power take off horsepower. 
• Connecting or disconnecting implements from or on to a tractor. 
• Operating farm machinery, including, but not limited to operating corn pickers, cotton pickers, grain combines, hay mowers, forage harvesters, hay balers, potato harvesters, mobile pea viners, feed grinders, crop dryers, forage blowers, auger conveyors or self-unloading wagons, power post hole diggers, power-driven non-walking rotary type tillers, trenchers or earthmoving equipment, potato combines. 
  In this subdivision "operating" means starting, stopping, adjusting, feeding or any other activity regarding physical conduct associated with such machines and machinery. 
• Working in a pen occupied by a bull, boar or stud horse maintained for breeding purposes, a sow with young pigs or a cow with a newborn calf. 
• Felling, bucking, skidding or unloading timber with butt more than six inches in diameter. 
• Picking or pruning from a ladder over eight feet in height. 
• Riding on a tractor as a helper or driving a bus, truck or automobile. 
• Working inside a fruit storage area or grain storage area designed to retain an oxygen deficient or toxic atmosphere, an upright silo, a manure pit or operating a tractor for packing purposes in a horizontal silo.
• Handling hazardous agricultural chemicals. 
• Handling explosives. 
• Transporting, transferring or applying anhydrous ammonia.