In states across the country, lawmakers are engaged in a coordinated, corporate-backed campaign to weaken child labor protections. One type of protection—minimum ages to serve alcohol in bars and restaurants—has been eroded in seven states since 2021. While lowering the age to serve alcohol may sound benign, it is not. It puts young people at risk of sexual harassment, underage drinking, and other harms.

The restaurant industry is already plagued by labor violations. In fact, it is the industry with the highest incidence of child labor law violations. Laws that lower the alcohol service age will subject more young people, at younger ages, to potentially dangerous working conditions at low wages—all in service of employers’ pursuit of cheap labor.

The restaurant industry is rife with abuse, including child labor law violations

Teen alcohol service is part of a corporate agenda to cut labor costs and deregulate employment. The National Restaurant Association (NRA)—which represents over 100 fast-food and full-service restaurant corporations and has affiliate groups in every state—has long sought to maintain low wages and weak labor standards in the restaurant industry. The NRA has also played a key role in recent efforts to roll back protections for young workers in numerous industries by lobbying in support of bills that extend the hours teens can work, lift restrictions on hazardous work, and eliminate the permitting process for youth work. While the NRA’s agenda on child labor is not confined to the restaurant industry, the lobbying organization is particularly focused on eroding protections for young workers in the restaurant industry, including by supporting efforts to lower the age at which young workers can serve alcohol in bars and restaurants.

The restaurant industry is notorious for low wages and benefits and exploitative working conditions, including systemic racial and gender discrimination and rates of sexual harassment that are dramatically higher than in other industries. The presence of alcohol is a serious risk factor, both for sexual harassment of restaurant industry workers and for alcohol dependence among restaurant workers. At the same time, restaurants are, by far, the worst offenders of child labor laws of any industry and are the largest industry employer of youth. A 2023 analysis by the Food and Environment Reporting Network of U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division data found that nearly two-thirds—64%—of the 16,000 documented child labor violations over the past five years were committed by food service employers. The leisure and hospitality industry, which includes food service employers and restaurants, has long employed the largest share of teens and young adults of any industry—between one-quarter and one-third of workers these ages.

In recent years, states have ramped up efforts to lower the alcohol service age

Our previous research on child labor documented coordinated attempts to roll back child labor protections in 14 states. Four of these 14 states (Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin) have introduced or passed bills related to youth work in the presence of alcohol in 2021–2023. A deeper analysis of the latter trend reveals a coordinated multistate effort to pass such laws that extends beyond these four states. This effort has been alarmingly successful but has received little attention compared with other child labor law rollbacks. Since 2021, at least nine states have introduced legislation to lower the alcohol service age. Seven of these states have signed the bills into law (see Table 1 and Figure A). For comparison, it previously took 18 years, from 2003 to 2020, for five states—South Dakota, Delaware, Arizona, North Dakota, and Arkansas—to make changes to youth alcohol service laws.

Table 1 includes only states that have proposing lowering the age to serve alcohol, but industry lobbying groups are also involved in efforts to lower the age for youth to work in the presence of alcohol. In the past two years, New Hampshire lowered the age to bus tables where alcohol is served, and Michigan and Tennessee lowered the age for youth to be employed in establishments that sell alcohol.

Recent changes represent an increasingly coordinated effort to roll back protections for young people in the restaurant industry, a trend that does not appear to be slowing.

Industry-backed efforts to lower the alcohol service age are out of step with public sentiment and put teens at risk

In nearly every state, the minimum age to serve alcohol was 18—until recently. Every state, except Maine and—more recently—West Virginia, requires individuals serving alcohol in bars and restaurants to be at least 18 years old, and three states (Alaska, Nevada, and Utah) have a minimum age of 21. In just over half of states, the minimum age to bartend is 21 but is 18 in many states and is as low as 16 in West Virginia. However, in recent years, states with a historically higher minimum age to serve alcohol have moved to lower the age to as young as 16 in West Virginia and Iowa and as young as 14 in a Wisconsin bill currently under consideration.

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s Alcohol Policy Information System (APIS), which tracks policies related to alcohol service, nine states require those serving alcohol to be at least 19. However, the APIS tracker has not yet been updated for age reductions made in five states—Alabama, Kentucky, Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio—since January 2022.

As shown in Table 1, these bills have been initiated and supported by industry groups that benefit from child labor in the food and beverage and restaurant industries, including retail, restaurant, and grocery associations; state licensed beverage associations; and state liquor commissions. The National Restaurant Association is leading efforts across the country to roll back child labor protections of all kinds, including those that prohibit young people from working excessive hours, in hazardous environments, or from using dangerous equipment. The restaurant industry and its allies in retail have been particularly involved in efforts to lower the age to serve alcohol and have played a central role in getting such bills passed with comparatively little opposition in state legislatures, despite widespread public support for alcohol regulation.

In Ohio, one lawmaker, explaining her rationale for supporting a bill to lower the age to serve alcohol from 19 to 18, said simply, “This is something the restaurants asked us to do.” In Kentucky, the Kentucky Restaurant Association (KRA) was credited with changing the alcohol service age from 20 to 18 and, according to the KRA’s president and CEO, getting the bill passed was “never really met with any obstacles.” And in Alabama, a board member of a state retail association (which also represents restaurants) called their successful rollback a “game-changer for my business and the hospitality industry.”

The lobbying groups have united around a common talking point: Lowering the age to serve alcohol will benefit employers suffering from a “labor shortage.” Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and fed up with low wages and tips, hostility from customers and managers, and concerns about COVID-19 safety, workers did leave the industry in droves. But, to the extent that jobs remain unfilled, it is a function of poor job quality and a problem with a clear solution: Raise wages and improve working conditions.

Additionally, industry attention to whether these laws are beneficial to young people is noticeably limited. Instead, these lawmakers are seeking to fix what they’ve identified as a temporary problem with permanent changes to labor laws that allow employers to replace adult workers with lower-paid youth in increasingly dangerous jobs.

In the United States, large majorities of people are more concerned with the health and safety issues related to alcohol, like underage drinking, than with economic issues, like letting more businesses sell alcohol. They agree that reducing regulations around minors’ access to alcohol is the wrong strategy. Numerous studies have found that underage servers are more likely to sell alcohol to underage buyers and, in general, greater access to alcohol is associated with higher rates of underage consumption. Permitting younger workers to serve alcohol will provide underage youth—both workers and customers—with increased proximity to direct and indirect alcohol-related harms that are especially acute for young people.

In states seeking to lower the alcohol service age, tipped workers and youth are already underpaid

The nine states that have lowered or are seeking to lower the age for alcohol service in bars and restaurants are characterized by low minimum wages and even lower minimum wages for tipped workers and youth. The vast majority of restaurant servers and bartenders work for tips—as do most bussers, barbacks, food runners, and service helpers—meaning their employer can legally pay them below the minimum wage with the expectation that they will earn enough in tips to reach the regular minimum wage. Tipped workers are much more likely to live in poverty than nontipped workers, in part due to low wages. There is also significant wage inequality and occupational segregation by race and gender within the industry. As a result, Black, Hispanic, women, and immigrant workers—who are overrepresented in tipped work—are more likely to work in lower-paid restaurant positions and are paid lower wages than white men, regardless of position.

All nine states where teen alcohol service bills have been introduced or passed in recent years pay tipped workers a subminimum wage—between $2.13 and $5.05 an hour. Though many states have raised the floor for tipped workers, most states still pay tipped workers below the regular minimum wage, and the nine states seeking to lower the alcohol service age are no exception. Federal law also permits employers to pay a subminimum wage—as low as $4.25—to workers under 20 years old for their first 90 days. But some states, including Ohio and Michigan, allow employers to pay youth below the minimum wage indefinitely (see Table 2). Many occupations typically held by youth (babysitters, newspaper deliverers, seasonal recreational workers) are also exempt from federal minimum wage provisions under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Given the weak standards governing both tipped and youth work, it is easy to see why the restaurant industry has targeted the intersection of these workers with such precision.

Tipped workers in the restaurant industry face the highest rates of sexual harassment

Tipped workers are not only paid low wages and subject to racial and gender discrimination, but they also face high rates of sexual harassment, rates that increased further during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a 2021 study by One Fair Wage, nearly three-quarters of women restaurant workers (71%) have been sexually harassed at least once in the restaurant industry—the highest rate of any industry that has recorded such data. Many of the women surveyed described harassment that occurred when they were young, and they said that their age, lack of experience in the industry, and the power dynamic between them and older managers and customers made them less likely to speak up. They blamed themselves, convinced themselves what they experienced was not harassment or, rightfully fearing retaliation, decided not to report harassment. Lowering the age to serve alcohol in bars and restaurants will subject even younger workers, particularly young women, to harm that will impact them for the rest of their lives.

Young people already face low wages and high rates of wage theft and frequently have their rights violated at work. Lowering the age to serve alcohol will expand the pool of youth potentially subject these issues as well as to the risks associated with underage access to alcohol. Instead of further eroding protections for youth in the restaurant industry, state lawmakers should seek to make restaurant industry jobs good-quality jobs for young people. That means opposing legislation to lower the alcohol service age below 18 and working to increase it to match the minimum drinking age of 21. More broadly, state lawmakers can improve job quality by raising the minimum wage and eliminating subminimum wages for youth and tipped workers.