State action to strengthen worker rights and protections has become critically important at a moment when long-standing U.S. labor standards are under acute threat. Escalating threats include Trump administration attempts to roll back (or stop enforcing) standards that set a national floor for minimum wage, overtime pay, health and safety, nondiscrimination, child labor, and other rights and protections long taken for granted in most U.S. workplaces.

Amid this crisis, states have urgent obligations to shore up basic protections. The crisis also presents states with big opportunities to remedy long-standing weaknesses and exclusions in outdated labor laws and take leadership in addressing major economic challenges like wage suppression, growing income inequality, racial and gender wage gaps, and declining job quality.

Below we summarize some of the actions states have taken so far in 2025 to raise wages, prevent harmful child labor, combat wage theft and worker misclassification, guarantee the right to unionize, expand paid leave, protect worker health and safety, and improve unemployment insurance. These examples from across the country show how state policymakers can assume more expansive, effective roles in enacting and enforcing key worker rights and protections.

Wages

The federal minimum wage—now officially a poverty wage—is just $7.25 per hour and has not increased since 2009. Moreover, federal law continues to allow employers to pay subminimum wages to tipped workers, workers with disabilities, youth under 18, and others, while excluding certain occupations (e.g., farmworkers) from coverage. Resulting wage suppression hurts all workers and is particularly harmful to Black workers and other workers of color. In the absence of federal action, states continue to lead important progress on raising the minimum wage to levels that address inflation and regional costs of living; eliminating subminimum wages; and closing loopholes that deny some groups of workers minimum wage coverage.

This year Rhode Island enacted legislation (H5029) to progressively raise the minimum wage to $17 by 2027. Virginia also passed legislation to increase the minimum wage to $17 by 2027, but it was ultimately vetoed by Governor Youngkin.

Following a years-long campaign, Maine expanded its state minimum wage law to include farmworkers who are otherwise excluded from most federal labor protections. (Maine legislators also passed related legislation [LD 588] to extend anti-retaliation protections to farmworkers, but it was vetoed by Governor Mills). And this year, Georgia joined 26 states that have taken action to prohibit or disincentivize paying subminimum wages to workers with disabilities. Georgia’s new law (SB 55) will phase out the disability subminimum wage by 2027.

Ongoing efforts to eliminate the tipped minimum wage met with setbacks in D.C., Michigan, and Colorado:

• In Washington, D.C.—where voters overwhelmingly supported measures to phase out the tipped minimum wage in both 2018 and 2022—the City Council voted to delay planned 2025 increases, extend the timeline for phasing in future increases to seven years, and eventually cap the tipped minimum wage at 75% of the minimum wage.
• Seven years after Michigan legislators blocked voters from weighing in on a highly popular ballot measure that would have phased out the tipped minimum wage, and a year after the Michigan Supreme Court reinstated the ballot measure’s benefits for low-wage workers, state legislators once again acted against voters’ wishes with compromise legislation (SB 8) that accelerates the schedule of minimum wage increases but maintains the state’s tipped subminimum wage.
• In response to intense lobbying from the restaurant industry, Colorado changed its law to allow localities with higher minimum wage rates to maintain relatively lower tipped minimum wages. Previously, Colorado cities with higher minimum wages were required to maintain a tipped minimum of $3.02 less than the local minimum wage (equivalent to the current $3.02 gap between the state tipped and full minimum wage). The new law allows for gaps larger than $3.02 between a local tipped and full minimum wage (providing that the local tipped minimum remains at least equivalent to the state tipped minimum). This compromise replaced an even worse bill that would have required all localities to lower their tipped minimum wage to match the state tipped minimum.

State prevailing wage standards—which require contractors on public works projects to pay workers at least the local median wage for a given type of work—help ensure that public investments yield good jobs with fair, equitable pay and benefits. This year, New Jersey strengthened its prevailing wage law by expanding prohibitions on public contracts with firms that have previously failed to pay prevailing wage. Oregon enacted HB 2688, extending prevailing wage requirements to some off-site manufacturing. A bill extending the state’s prevailing wage requirement to contractors working on underground infrastructure works passed in Virginia but was vetoed by Governor Youngkin.

Child labor

Despite ongoing federal- and state-level attempts to erode the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, advocates in several states succeeded in blocking new threats to weaken child labor protections. For example, EARN network affiliate Florida Policy Institute helped block two related bills (HB 1225 and SB 918) that would have allowed employers to schedule some 14- and 15-year-olds and all 16- and 17-year-olds for unlimited hours of work without breaks. Florida advocates also stopped passage of a bill (SB 676) that threatened to exempt student internships and work-study programs from the state minimum wage.

Continuing a growing trend, several states passed proactive legislation to shore up child labor protections. New York’s budget bill drastically increases civil penalties and adds criminal homicide charges for employers who cause the death of a child due to negligence on the job, while Washington passed legislation (HB 1644) increasing penalties for child labor violations, limiting an employer’s ability to hire minors following repeated violations, and strengthening state agency oversight of employers seeking permits to supervise student learning that involves potentially hazardous work.

Unfortunately, West Virginia eliminated their youth work permit system for 14–15-year-olds and replaced it with a mandatory age certification process which transfers sole approval authority and recordkeeping responsibilities from schools to the state labor division. Though an improvement on a previous bill, this law means school officials will no longer have the authority to reject work arrangements they believe are not in a student’s best interest.

Preventing wage theft and worker misclassification

State roles in enforcing strong wage payment standards are more important than ever at a moment when the Trump administration is rolling back federal wage and hour standards and the number of federal Department of Labor (DOL) Wage and Hour Division investigators is already at an all-time low. This year, several states passed legislation to prevent wage theft:

• Building on an impressive multi-year initiative to strengthen state labor standards enforcement, Oregon’s SB 426 strengthens protections for construction workers by holding both project owners and contractors liable for unpaid wages. Oregon also passed HB 5015 to strengthen and increase funding for the state agency responsible for enforcing standards, the Bureau of Labor and Industries.
• Minnesota continued progress on combating wage theft with an amendment to existing laws that gives county attorneys authority to subpoena records of employers in wage theft investigations.
• Colorado enacted a new version of legislation (HB 1001) previously vetoed by Governor Polis, that will now expand state agency authority to penalize employers who commit wage theft and publicize violations on a state agency website.
• New York’s budget bill gives the state’s DOL more power to enforce wage theft laws, including the ability to seize a violator’s financial assets following an unpaid wage theft judgment.

Growing recognition of the costs of worker misclassification continued to generate important state policy advances in 2025. Employers who illegally misclassify employees as “independent contractors” skirt payroll tax, unemployment, and workers’ compensation payments, while depriving workers of fundamental workplace rights and increasing the likelihood of wage theft. 

• Though ultimately vetoed by the governor, Virginia lawmakers passed HB2561, which would have extended the timeframe for filing wage and misclassification claims and held employers liable for damages awarded in lawsuits.
• In Delaware, a bill currently awaiting the governor’s signature would hold contractors liable when their subcontractors misclassify workers and allow the state’s DOL to enforce compliance.

Rights to unionize and collectively bargain

Several states acted this year to strengthen workers’ rights to organize and bargain or to hold the line against new attacks on the right to unionize. State policies are especially critical for determining whether workers have the freedom to form unions at a moment when the Trump administration is hobbling the federal government’s ability to adjudicate labor law violations, attacking union rights of federal employees, and eliminating capacities to mediate contract negotiations. Even prior to these escalating attacks, millions of workers interested in unionizing faced daunting obstacles to organizing under weak, outdated federal laws that employers routinely violate.

This year, Washington (SB 5041) and Oregon (SB 916) took steps to encourage fairer labor negotiations by extending eligibility for unemployment insurance to striking workers. Connecticut legislation to do the same passed for the second year in a row but was again vetoed by Governor Lamont. Rhode Island (SB 126) joined the now 13 states protecting employees’ freedom to opt out of employer-sponsored “captive audience” meetings on political or religious matters unrelated to work duties. Such mandatory meetings are frequently used by employers to communicate anti-union views amid highly coercive, retaliatory campaigns to block workers from unionizing.

Several states took affirmative steps to safeguard collective bargaining rights for groups of workers otherwise excluded from federal coverage, or to resist attempts to limit workers’ collective bargaining rights with so-called right-to-work (RTW) laws. Vermont legislators approved placing a constitutional amendment guaranteeing collective bargaining rights on the ballot in 2026. Two other New England states—New Hampshire and Maine—rejected unpopular proposals to pass RTW legislation.

Colorado legislators passed the Worker Protection Act in an attempt to reverse an 80-year-old law that imposes de facto RTW conditions in the state. Unlike any other state, Colorado requires unionizing private-sector workers to undergo a state-sanctioned “second election” in order to gain full bargaining rights. Despite passage by large margins and a robust campaign demonstrating economic benefits of strengthening unions, the Worker Protection Act was vetoed by Governor Jared Polis.

Virginia attempted a significant expansion of collective bargaining coverage for state and local public employees (building on 2021 legislation that lifted a state ban on local government collective bargaining), but Governor Youngkin vetoed the legislation.

In Ohio, a new law curtailing freedom of speech in higher education also stripped faculty of their right to strike. In other states where legislators continued attacking rights of public employees this year, workers largely succeeded in resisting. For example, some Florida legislators attempted to make it even harder for public-sector workers to form or maintain unions, building on an already extreme anti-union law enacted in 2023. But this year, no new anti-union bills (HB 1217, HB 1387, HB 1328, SB 1766) were enacted in Florida. Most notably, after Utah passed unpopular legislation banning public-sector collective bargaining, over 300,000 Utahns successfully petitioned for a ballot measure to repeal the ban. The question will now go before voters in 2026.

Paid leave

Fed up with decades of lawmakers’ failure to enact paid leave legislation, voters approved paid sick leave ballot measures by wide margins in Alaska, Nebraska, and Missouri last November. All three of these ballot measures then came under fire during 2025 legislative sessions. Republican-majority legislatures repealed the paid sick leave portion of Proposition A in Missouri and weakened Nebraska’s paid sick leave program with new exclusions denying coverage to seasonal agricultural workers, young workers, and those working for small businesses. Attempts to do the same in Alaska were unsuccessful, and Alaska workers have now begun to accrue paid sick leave under the new program.

Several states—including Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi—took small but important steps to extend paid parental leave to some public employees, continuing a multi-year trend in the South. Signaling potential for much bigger breakthroughs on paid leave in the South, Virginia legislators passed HB2531, which would have established a statewide comprehensive paid family and medical leave program, if it had not been vetoed by Governor Youngkin.

Workplace health and safety

The Trump administration’s dangerous war on workplace health and safety standards was replicated in some state legislatures this year and actively resisted in others. Two new laws in Kentucky will increase dangers workers face on the job: The first (HB 196) reduces the number of emergency medical technicians required on site at active coal mines. The second (HB 398) cripples the state’s OSHA program by prohibiting the state from enforcing existing safety laws above the federal floor, limiting who can request safety inspections, and restricting the time in which an employee can file a complaint of retaliation after reporting a safety hazard. Florida legislation (HB 6033) threatening to repeal a 1995 state law that extends rights and protections to temporary and day laborers ultimately died in the House after a fierce campaign by grassroots group Beyond the Bars. Its repeal would have left these laborers without a number of health and safety protections not guaranteed at the federal level.

Other states are taking important steps to close loopholes in federal law or to anticipate potential erosion of federal OSHA standards. Maryland established a new state OSHA program to cover public-sector workers (who are otherwise excluded from federal OSHA coverage) and 18 states proposed standards to protect workers exposed to extreme heat. Though none have passed yet in 2025, these bills signal the dire need for heat exposure regulations (which already exist in seven states) as a proposed federal OSHA heat standard currently under consideration could take years to reach approval and is at risk of being weakened or abandoned by the Trump administration.

Unemployment insurance

This year, several states passed positive expansions and improvements to their unemployment insurance (UI) systems, while others weakened theirs.

Virginia enacted two UI improvements. The first, SB 1056, increased UI benefits, while SB 1057 increased the amount of “disregarded” income people can earn from part-time jobs without reducing their benefits. VA legislators also considered—but failed to pass—a related bill that would have allowed unemployed federal contractors to qualify for unemployment insurance. Georgia enacted updates to its UI system with the goal of allowing quicker and more efficient communication with UI recipients, and legislators in Maine created an interest-free loan system to help cover lost income for public employees during government shutdowns. The North Carolina House passed an increase to UI benefits, but the bill stalled in the Senate.

Continuing a long-standing trend of attacks on already fragile unemployment insurance systems, several states further weakened UI despite vocal opposition. West Virginia and Louisiana made it harder for workers to access benefits, passing legislation to require drug tests to qualify for benefits and increasing work search requirements respectively. Louisiana’s bill also slashed overall benefit amounts. After slashing UI benefits in 2023, this year Iowa enacted SF 607, drastically lowering employers’ contribution rates and putting the state’s UI trust fund at high risk for future insolvency. Workers and advocates had to fend off many other harmful UI bills in other states. Texas’s HB 199, for example, would have indexed Texans’ maximum number of UI benefits to the statewide average unemployment rate, slashing up to 12 weeks of unemployment insurance coverage for workers and unfairly punishing rural workers. Thanks to opposition from groups including EPI’s EARN affiliate EveryTexan, this bill was killed in committee.

Conclusion

While the Trump administration’s attacks on workers and unions continue to escalate, some states are stepping in to shore up and expand workers’ rights and protections. While much more remains to be done, 2025 state legislative sessions provide powerful reminders that states can and should, at a minimum, resist threats to erode labor standards and lock in existing worker protections. The national worker rights crisis also calls for more states to push beyond minimum standards, fix gaps and exclusions in weak labor laws, ensure all workers can build power, and lay the policy foundation necessary to rebuild an economy that works for all.

Since returning to office, the Trump administration has gutted the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP)—which has long ensured that employers conducting business with the federal government comply with equal employment opportunity laws. This has made equal employment laws effectively unenforceable for the entire civilian federal contracting workforce.

What’s happening?

In January, President Trump issued Executive Order (EO) 14173 that drastically cut OFCCP’s enforcement oversight and ended affirmative action requirements for federal contractors established by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. In a total about-face from six decades of leveraging the purchasing power of the federal government to encourage private-sector employers to adopt more equitable employment practices and establish written affirmative action programs for women and minorities, Trump’s executive order explicitly discourages any efforts to remedy racialized or gendered patterns of discrimination in employment or pay. Instead, it derisively and inaccurately labels such efforts as “DEI-based discrimination”, implying that they result in workers of color and women unfairly displacing more qualified (assumptively white male) candidates.

Recently, the agency proposed regulations to further unwind its own work and authority. One of the proposed rules would formally rescind the regulations implementing President Johnson’s original EO to establish the agency’s existence and authority. Another would risk weakening data collection on whether federal contractors are meeting “utilization goals”—benchmarks for evaluating the representation of people with disabilities in the federal contracting workforce. These actions showcase the Trump administration’s embrace of Project 2025’s anti-worker and anti-equity agenda, which included a policy proposal to eliminate OFCCP.

Trump’s 2026 budget formally requests Congress to defund OFCCP’s operations. If Congress were to agree to zero out OFCCP’s budget—and if the regulatory unwinding of the agency’s primary mandate proceeds without obstacles—there would no longer be any federal agency dedicated to ensuring that federal contractors operate fair, nondiscriminatory workplaces. In other words, taxpayer dollars could essentially subsidize persistent discrimination. Under the Trump administration’s plans, OFCCP’s remaining legal responsibilities to enforce equal employment opportunity for certain veterans and for workers with disabilities would shift over to the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Veterans Employment and Training Service (VETS) or to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC)—agencies with different mandates and areas of expertise than the federal contracting workforce.

In one promising sign, fortunately, the Senate Appropriations Committee recently voted to advance a bipartisan funding proposal that rejected the Trump administration’s request to zero out OFCCP’s budget. It remains to be seen how appropriators in the House or the Trump administration will respond.

Shuttering the OFCCP will hurt Black and women workers the most

As a relatively small DOL division, OFCCP’s work has gone largely unnoticed by the broader public even though it has achieved important results for workers. According to historical data that the Trump administration removed from the OFCCP website, OFCCP conducted reviews at contractor sites employing over 10.3 million workers between 2014 and 2024. OFCCP investigations resulted in 250,900 workers obtaining financial relief totaling $260.8 million during that period—and over 22,600 individuals employed by federal contractors received new job opportunities or salary adjustments.

Table 1 presents historical monetary relief data by class, revealing the groups most likely to be harmed by Trump’s actions. Black workers and women received most of the monetary relief resulting from OFCCP investigations between 2020 and 2024, demonstrating just how targeted the impact of Trump’s executive order will be.

Stripped of its authority and with only minimal staff remaining, OFCCP’s only remaining equal employment compliance oversight is for disabled workers under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 3) and protected veterans under the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA). However, as Table 1 shows, no more than 0.1% of monetary relief resulting from OFCCP investigations over the past five years was awarded based on disability or veteran status.

Table 1

While there are no public data on the demographic composition of workers employed by federal contractors, current labor force demographics illustrate the potential magnitude of those changes. Figure A shows the share of the labor force by race, ethnicity, and gender that is either disabled or a veteran. Among Black workers—the largest share of monetary relief recipients—less than 8% of Black women and 13% of Black men would be eligible for monetary relief based on disability or veteran status alone. Across all racial groups, a smaller share of women than men would remain eligible.

Figure A

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the federal government obligated $755.1 billion through contracts in 2024 to procure products and services ranging from aircraft and software to health care and engineering support. The planned elimination of OFCCP represents the Trump administration’s surrender of this tremendous federal leverage to enforce nondiscrimination compliance among private-sector employers. It is also a major shirking of the federal government’s responsibility to demand accountability from businesses who profit from billions in taxpayer dollars, including tax dollars paid by people they now have a lot less obligation to employ and pay fairly. This would be a clear retreat from the principles of economic, racial, and gender justice which are the basis for equal rights and full participation in our society. The American people deserve better.