Michigan Moves Teen Work Permits Online October 2

If your teen has a job, or wants one, the paperwork moves this month.

Starting October 2, 2026, Michigan schools stop issuing work permits for minors. The Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity takes over, and both the minor and the employer register through a free state website. Districts have been sending notices home since summer.

For most families this is simpler, not harder. The old system meant tracking down a specific person in the school office, often during a week when the office was closed. The new one is a form you fill out from the kitchen table.

But two things are worth knowing before you assume it is nothing.

First, the transition is where things get lost. Permits issued the old way, employers who have not registered yet, a first job starting mid-October: these are the situations where a teen shows up for a shift and gets sent home.

Second, this is happening while rules for teen work are being rewritten in a dozen states at once, mostly in the opposite direction. Michigan is tightening and centralizing. Several states are doing the reverse. Advice from another state may be wrong for where you live.

Parents guess at these constantly, and the guesses are usually generous.

For 14 and 15 year olds in Michigan, the limits are firm. Work is allowed between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. from June 1 through Labor Day, and between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. the rest of the year. During weeks when school is in session, up to 3 hours on a school day and 18 hours per week. When school is not in session, up to 40 hours per week.

Read that again: 18 hours a week, 3 hours on a school day. A lot of families discover in October that the schedule their kid agreed to in August is not legal now that classes have started.

For 16 and 17 year olds the hours are wider, but limits still apply, and certain occupations remain off limits regardless of hours. The state's Youth Employment Standards Act page is the authority, and it is worth reading rather than relying on what an employer tells you. Employers get this wrong, sometimes innocently.

The hour limits are the employer's legal obligation, not your teen's. But your teen is the one who gets scheduled, gets tired, and stops doing homework. Enforcing it at home is easier than untangling it in November.

None of this is legal advice, and the state pages linked below are the source of record.

Because there is an active argument about teen work, and it is playing out state by state rather than nationally.

The Economic Policy Institute tracked the 2026 sessions and found only three states introduced bills to strengthen youth labor standards, down from fifteen the year before. Several states loosened theirs. Indiana eliminated its youth employment documentation system, so the state labor department no longer maintains the employer database. Washington doubled allowable hours for teens in approved work-based learning programs, from four hours a day and twenty a week to eight and forty-eight. Nevada went the other way, capping under-sixteen workers at forty hours where the prior limit was forty-eight.

Michigan sits in an unusual spot. The law taking effect October 2 tightens restrictions for 14 to 17 year olds while modernizing the permit process. But in July 2026 the Michigan House also passed a separate bill to eliminate the work permit requirement altogether. That bill has not become law, and the October transition is what schools are currently telling families to plan around. It is a live argument, not a settled one.

The takeaway for a parent is unglamorous: check your own state's rules, this year, on the state labor department's own website. Advice from a neighboring state or an employer's handbook may describe a rule that no longer exists where you live.

Here is the part almost nobody explains.

Work permits and youth employment hour limits generally govern the relationship between a minor and an employer. A kid who mows lawns for neighbors, sells prints on Etsy, tutors a younger student, or runs a small resale account is usually not an employee of anyone. Those rules mostly do not reach that activity.

That gap is not a loophole. It is a structural difference, and understanding it changes what you tell your kid.

Self-employment brings obligations employment does not. Income above certain thresholds may need to be reported. Some platforms require an adult account holder under a certain age. Local rules on selling food, door-to-door sales, or operating from a residence still apply regardless of the seller's age. And no employer is handling withholding, insurance, or scheduling limits, which means the family is doing that thinking.

So the framing for a fifteen year old is this: working for someone else comes with protections and a ceiling. Working for yourself removes the ceiling and the protections at the same time.

Both are good. They teach different things. A teen who does eight months at a grocery store learns reliability and what an hour of their time is worth to someone else. A teen who runs their own thing learns pricing, customers, and what happens when nobody schedules you.

If yours moves toward the second path seriously, the questions get real fast: what to charge, what it costs to make, whether it scales past a few customers. Planning tools built for first-time founders, Foundra among them, walk through those sections in order, and the exercise translates fine to a teenager's project.

Do this once and you will not think about it again until spring.

One. Confirm whether your teen holds a valid permit and who issued it. If it came from the school before October 2, ask the employer whether they need a new one under the state system.

Two. Confirm the employer has registered on the state site. This is their job, but a small business owner may not know yet.

Three. Compare the schedule to the school-year limits, not the summer limits. Write the weekly cap on the fridge.

Four. Agree on where the money goes before the first check clears. A split like 50% spend, 30% save, 20% long-term works, and deciding in advance matters more than the exact numbers.

Five. Ask your teen to read the hour limits themselves, not you summarizing them. This is the first time a government rule applies to them personally, and reading it directly is a small but real civics lesson.

That last one produces better conversations than you would expect. Teenagers are interested in rules that constrain adults on their behalf. It reframes a work permit from nuisance into something closer to a right.

A work permit is a small, concrete example of something abstract: the conditions of your work are set by rules you did not personally negotiate.

Most kids meet this in an economics class as a paragraph they forget. Meeting it as a form they fill out before they can earn money is a different kind of learning.

A few things worth naming out loud.

Rules change, and they change locally. The reason a cousin in Washington can work eight hours a day in a school program and your kid cannot is not fairness or logic. It is a legislature making a decision in a particular year. That is how a lot of the adult world works.

Protections and freedom trade off. The hour limits that annoy a sixteen year old who wants more shifts are the same limits that stop an employer from scheduling them until midnight before an exam. Both are true at once.

And systems have friction. The October transition will produce confused employers, delayed permits, and at least one teenager sent home from a shift. Learning to handle administrative friction calmly, by checking the source rather than guessing, is a real adult skill that costs nothing to practice at fifteen.

October 2 is the date. Michigan schools stop issuing work permits; the state Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity takes over through a free online registration site for minors and employers.

School-year hours are tighter than summer hours. For 14 and 15 year olds, 3 hours on a school day and 18 a week, versus up to 40 when school is out.

States are diverging fast. Only three states introduced bills strengthening youth labor standards in 2026, down from fifteen. Check your own state directly.

Michigan's direction is contested. The House passed a bill in July 2026 to eliminate the permit requirement; it has not become law.

Self-employment sits outside most of this. A kid running their own business is usually not an employee, which removes the hour limits and the protections together.

Ten minutes now beats a scramble later. Permit status, employer registration, schedule versus limits, and where the money goes.

Does my teen need a new permit if they already have one from school? Check with the employer and the state site. Permits issued under the old school-based process may not carry over cleanly, and the employer has to hold valid documentation.

Who pays for the permit? Michigan's new registration system is free for minors and employers.

Can my 14 year old work more hours if we agree as a family? No. Hour limits are set by state law and apply to the employer regardless of parental permission.

What about babysitting or lawn mowing for neighbors? Casual work is generally treated differently from employment by a business, and permit rules usually do not apply. Local rules can still apply, so check if the work involves food, door-to-door sales, or a regular commercial arrangement.

Where do I find my own state's rules if I am not in Michigan? Search for your state's labor department plus "youth employment" or "minor work permits." Use the state's own site rather than a summary, since 2026 saw a lot of change and third-party pages go stale quickly.

1. Work Permit Information (Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity)
2. Youth Employment Standards Act (Michigan LEO)
3. New law will change youth employment standards in Michigan (MSU Spartan Newsroom)
4. State lawmakers continued to weaken child labor protections in 2026 (Economic Policy Institute)
5. States Redraw the Rules on Child Labor (Ogletree Deakins)
6. Youth Work Permit Process is Changing (Wayland Union Schools)