Florida has been working for years to crack down on employers that hire undocumented immigrants. But that presented a problem for businesses in the state that are desperate for workers to fill low-wage and often undesirable jobs.
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state legislature have a potential solution: children. The state’s legislature on Tuesday advanced a bill that would loosen child labor laws, allowing children as young as 14 years old to work overnight shifts. If the new law is passed, teenagers would be able to work overnight jobs on school days. They are currently prevented from working earlier than 6:30 am or later than 11 pm per state law.
The bill passed through the Florida Senate’s Commerce and Tourism committee on Tuesday with five votes in favor of the loosened child labor restrictions and four against them. The bill will pass through two other relevant committees before being put to a vote with the full Florida Senate. DeSantis is supportive of the law and has been vocal of cracking down on immigration, echoing President Donald Trump’s rhetoric. However, economists have warned that could backfire, sparking further inflation and labor shortages.
“Why do we say we need to import foreigners, even import them illegally, when you know, teenagers used to work at these resorts, college students should be able to do this stuff,” DeSantis said last week at a panel discussion with border czar Tom Homan, as first reported by the Tampa Bay Times.
The state has been easing up on child labor protections for years. Last year, the legislature passed a law allowing home-schooled 16- and 17-year old teens to work any hour of the day.
The state’s Republican-led legislature on Tuesday will debate the new law, which also includes a number of changes including eliminating working time restrictions on teenagers aged 14 and 15 if they are home-schooled and ending guaranteed meal breaks for 16 and 17 year olds.
The number of child labor violations in Florida has nearly tripled in recent years, according to US Department of Labor statistics.

Car costs, which have already spiked 20 percent since the pandemic, are expected to get another jolt in coming weeks, with the Trump administration’s newest proposed tariffs likely to add thousands of dollars to manufacturers’ sticker prices. It’s unclear exactly how and when prices will start ticking up, but analysts say brands such as Lexus, Toyota, Honda and Subaru are likely to be among the first to face higher costs because they have the smallest stockpiles of cars already in the U.S.
“We’re going to start seeing prices rise almost immediately,” said Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist at Cox Automotive, who expects an average markup of $6,000 per car. “Some of the most affordable vehicles — compact SUVs, for example — are made outside the country, so they’re going to be the most vulnerable.”
In addition to lifting car prices, economists say the new tariffs will stifle global production and cut into U.S. economic growth at a time when there are already signs of strain. Consumers, who account for roughly 70 percent of the country’s economy, are beginning to pull back in the face of high costs and elevated interest rates. Further price increases could put a freeze on the sale of motor vehicles and parts, which accounted for about 20 percent of the economy’s growth in late 2024.
“You take a $40,000 car — now it’s a $45,000 or $50,000 car,” said John Luciano, owner of Street Volkswagen, a dealership in Amarillo, Texas, where roughly 80 percent of cars come from overseas. “There is no way around it, these tariffs are going to be brutal.”
“Even if you’re thinking, ‘I’ll just go buy the most American car I can think of — a Ford F-150,’ it’s really not that simple,” said Joseph Yoon, consumer insights analyst at the automotive research site Edmunds. “Half the parts on that truck are from Canada or Mexico.” "For a lot of people, it’s the second-biggest expense after housing, and it’s how they get to work”. “Car prices are already the highest they’ve ever been, and now you slap a 25 percent tariff on them — that means customers will stop buying. It’ll be a hit to the economy.”
At Glassman Automotive Group in Southfield, Michigan, the automotive group’s president said that an additional spike in prices would push car buying further out of reach for many. “It’s going to affect all the brands I sell — Hyundai, Kia, Subaru,” said George Glassman, who employs about 120 people. “No one really knows just yet whether this means you’ll be $2,000 or $3,000 or $7,000 more for a car, but it’s going to create an incredible disruption to the overall industry.”
“One of the main goals of the tariffs is to reshore production, to bring manufacturing back from overseas,” said Abby Samp, an industry economist at Oxford Economics. “There’s probably some scope for that, but it is going to involve a significant amount of investment, and it will raise costs for U.S. manufacturers and households.”

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Florida has been working for years to crack down on employers that hire undocumented immigrants. But that presented a problem for businesses in the state that are desperate for workers to fill low-wage and often undesirable jobs.
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state legislature have a potential solution: children. The state’s legislature on Tuesday advanced a bill that would loosen child labor laws, allowing children as young as 14 years old to work overnight shifts. If the new law is passed, teenagers would be able to work overnight jobs on school days. They are currently prevented from working earlier than 6:30 am or later than 11 pm per state law.
The bill passed through the Florida Senate’s Commerce and Tourism committee on Tuesday with five votes in favor of the loosened child labor restrictions and four against them. The bill will pass through two other relevant committees before being put to a vote with the full Florida Senate. DeSantis is supportive of the law and has been vocal of cracking down on immigration, echoing President Donald Trump’s rhetoric. However, economists have warned that could backfire, sparking further inflation and labor shortages.
“Why do we say we need to import foreigners, even import them illegally, when you know, teenagers used to work at these resorts, college students should be able to do this stuff,” DeSantis said last week at a panel discussion with border czar Tom Homan, as first reported by the Tampa Bay Times.
The state has been easing up on child labor protections for years. Last year, the legislature passed a law allowing home-schooled 16- and 17-year old teens to work any hour of the day.
The state’s Republican-led legislature on Tuesday will debate the new law, which also includes a number of changes including eliminating working time restrictions on teenagers aged 14 and 15 if they are home-schooled and ending guaranteed meal breaks for 16 and 17 year olds.
The number of child labor violations in Florida has nearly tripled in recent years, according to US Department of Labor statistics.