The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit on Tuesday, December 11, against the Minneapolis school district, alleging that the contract the district signed with the teachers’ union—the Minneapolis Federation of Educators (MFE)—discriminates against white teachers by requiring the school district to shield Black and brown teachers from layoffs. The lawsuit fundamentally misrepresents the innovative Minneapolis union contract, which protects educators from arbitrary dismissal while also seeking to preserve a diverse teaching workforce. The lawsuit is however aligned with the Trump administration’s revisionist version of history that positions white workers as the primary victims of employment discrimination. At the same time, this ahistorical narrative dismisses the long and well-documented record of discrimination against Black and brown workers evident in persistent racial disparities in unemployment and pay—patterns the contract seeks to remedy. The lawsuit was filed soon after the Trump administration’s racist decision to target Minnesota’s Somali community and is yet another example of how racial animus is a defining feature of Trump’s policies.

Throughout 2025, the Trump administration has discriminated against Black and brown federal employees—and taken actions that make it easier for all employers to follow suit—by weaponizing the enforcement of antidiscrimination laws against the people they were justifiably created to protect. This includes redirecting EEOC priorities toward so-called “DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination and anti-American national origin bias,” restricting use of disparate impact liability, and effectively ending enforcement of equal employment laws for the civilian federal contracting workforce by gutting the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. The administration’s actions clearly demonstrate how risky it is for workers not to have the protections of a legally binding union contract.

A key element of any union contract is protection from unfair and arbitrary dismissals. For school employees, as for so many, the greatest risk is an employer who plays favorites. Whenever an employer has the unfettered right to decide who stays and who goes, workers suffer. In K–12 education, the risk of layoff is a persistent issue because school districts face endemic funding challenges and are frequently forced to reduce staffing levels. Because educator unions don’t want to give principals and superintendents the right to pick and choose who gets laid off based on their own whims, they have traditionally fought for seniority protections, often known as “last in, first out,” or LIFO. Under LIFO contract provisions, seniority is the sole determining factor in layoff decisions, with newer teachers laid off before more senior ones.

However, LIFO has a tremendous drawback: It hinders efforts to recruit and retain Black and brown teachers. In Minneapolis, for example, only 20% of Minneapolis teachers are people of color, even though fully two-thirds of the student body is Black or brown. Similar patterns are observed nationally. Almost half (49.5%) of K–12 students in the U.S. are Black, Hispanic, or Asian American and Pacific Islander, compared with only 24.4% of teachers. As studies have long documented, LIFO contributes to this disparity because even if a school district is able to hire more Black and brown teachers, they will be the first let go as more senior white teachers are retained.

At the same time, however, teachers’ unions are right to fight for layoff provisions that take away the arbitrary power of school districts to pick and choose who they keep. A core function of unions has always been to protect workers across occupations from being subject to the whims of supervisors. Indeed, Black and Hispanic workers report higher levels of unfair dismissals, suggesting that racial inequities would persist or even get worse in the absence of union protections. Union protections are also critical to narrowing pay disparities. According to a 2024 Rand report, Black teachers received lower average salaries and pay raises than white teachers. This difference was further linked to the fact that Black teachers were less likely to live in states with collective bargaining. The inadequacy of pay is one of the main reasons teachers report for leaving the profession, further contributing to the demographic mismatch between teachers and students.

This is the conundrum that MFE sought to address when the union went on strike in 2022: preserving protections against unfair dismissal while mitigating the inequities of LIFO. The solution they reached in 2022, a solution approved by 76% of MFE’s majority-white membership, was elegant and fair. The contract does not guarantee that Black or brown teachers will be protected from layoffs, contrary to the claims of right-wing groups that the contract is “woke” and “racially discriminatory.” Rather, the contract states that, when the district is forced to lay off teachers, it will protect teachers from populations that are “underrepresented among licensed teachers in the district.”

This means the contract’s protections can and will shift over time, as the composition of the teaching workforce changes. If and when Black teachers are no longer underrepresented in the district, they will no longer be afforded special protections against layoffs. Indeed, if someday it is white teachers who are underrepresented, the same contract provisions would apply to them. Far from embedding racial discrimination into the contract, these provisions support the development of a diverse teaching workforce while protecting worker rights.

The goal of a diverse teaching workforce is not just a noble one but also supports the success and well-being of students of color. Research indicates that the presence of teachers who reflect the diversity of the student body is linked to lower rates of suspension, lower dropout rates, greater college aspirations, and improved test scores. The contract MFE fought for will support the careers of Black and brown teachers and will lead to a teaching staff that looks more like its students, while continuing to protect all educators from arbitrary dismissal. The Department of Justice’s claims are a complete distortion of reality. Sadly, that is what we have come to expect from this administration, which seems dead set on rolling back decades of civil rights protections and abdicating the 60-year position of the federal government in setting a higher standard for employing a workforce that represents the diversity of the U.S. population. Hopefully, the courts will recognize this and allow Minneapolis Public Schools to continue its innovative program to protect a diverse workforce.

If the Trump administration follows through on its goal of deporting 4 million people over four years, the direct care industry would lose close to 400,000 jobs—affecting 274,000 immigrant and 120,000 U.S.-born workers. This dramatic reduction in trained care workers would compromise home-based care services, forcing family members to scramble for informal arrangements to support relatives who are older or have disabilities.

The Trump administration has consistently prioritized aggressive and arbitrary immigration enforcement, with the ultimate goal of deporting 1 million people every year of his term—regardless of their contributions to their communities and the U.S. economy. While the Department of Homeland Security’s pace currently falls short, increased enforcement would curtail business operations and reduce employer demand for both immigrant and U.S.-born workers. Over four years, 1 million annual deportations could cause total employment in the United States to fall by 5.9 million jobs, with particularly severe losses in construction and child care industries.

The direct care sector is also highly vulnerable to these enforcement actions. Amanda Kreider and Rachel Werner’s recent research indicates that job losses will significantly affect workers who provide long-term care in home- and community-based settings. The direct care sector—which includes home health aides, personal care aides, orderlies, psychiatric aides, and some nursing assistants—relies heavily on immigrant labor. Immigrants constitute nearly 30% of the direct care workforce, compared with 20% of overall employment. Among home health aides who assist with daily living and healthcare tasks, four in 10 workers are immigrants.

Kreider and Werner found that previous increases in immigration enforcement caused the direct care sector to shrink. If these patterns hold under the current enforcement regime, four million deportations over four years could cause direct care employment to fall by 394,000 (see Figure A).

Figure A

The majority of this employment decline—274,000 jobs—will result from the loss of immigrant workers. However, in addition to removing a supply of labor, deportations also make the labor market more precarious for immigrant workers. When immigrants face heightened risk of arrest, detention, or deportation, their ability to change jobs becomes severely constrained. With reduced labor market leverage, employers can worsen working conditions and suppress wages for all workers in the sector, not just those directly affected by deportations.

Contrary to the misconception that deportations will increase job opportunities for U.S-born workers, existing research consistently demonstrates that increased immigration enforcement reduces the employment for both immigrant and U.S.-born workers. Deteriorating pay and conditions for direct care workers would make U.S.-born workers unlikely to step in to replace the shortfall of immigrant workers, consistent with what studies have found when immigration enforcement decreased the size of the construction and child care sectors. In direct care, about 30% of the employment decline—the equivalent of around 120,000 jobs—will affect U.S.-born workers.

While employment reductions will be widespread, they will hit certain states particularly hard due to the geographic concentration of noncitizen immigrants in the direct care sector (see Table 1). New York faces especially severe challenges. Immigrants comprise two-thirds of the state’s direct care workforce, and more than one-third of all noncitizens working in direct care nationwide live in New York. If the Trump administration achieves its deportation goals, New York’s direct care sector could shrink by 45%.

Table 1

These large employment losses would translate directly into reduced availability of direct care services. Kreider and Werner found that past escalations of immigration enforcement led to substantial increases in the number of older adults living without any help at home. Among the Medicaid population, formal nonfamily caregiving declined while family-based caregiving increased, reflecting the contraction of the formal direct care sector.

This shift from formal to family-based care suggests that job losses in the direct care sector will have large spillover effects across the economy, greatly increasing their potential harm to even U.S.-born workers. As direct care supply becomes constrained due to deportations, some family members may need to leave their jobs or reduce their work hours to assume new caretaking responsibilities. Indeed, other research has shown that increases in immigration enforcement caused U.S.-born mothers to work fewer hours due to declining availability of household services like cleaning and child care. Family members may well be forced to choose between their careers and caring for aging and disabled relatives.

The Trump administration’s deportation agenda threatens to trigger a cascading crisis in senior and disability care that will harm families across the economic spectrum. Even in the absence of deportations, caretaking needs will accelerate as the older population grows tremendously, especially in the next five years. If the direct care workforce contracts by nearly 400,000 workers due to deportations, millions of older adults and people with disabilities will be left without the professional assistance they need to remain safely in their homes. Rather than creating jobs for U.S.-born workers as proponents claim, mass deportations eliminate employment opportunities for citizens and immigrants alike while dismantling a care infrastructure that seniors, people with disabilities, and families depend on.

Earnings above a cap aren’t subject to the payroll taxes that fund Social Security. As a result, billionaires pay the same tax as someone earning $176,100 in 2025 (the cap is indexed to the average wage, so it changes every year).

“Scrapping the cap” is a popular and effective way to address Social Security’s funding gap. Nearly three-fourths of Social Security’s projected long-term shortfall would be eliminated if the cap were scrapped without increasing benefits.

But wouldn’t such a move be opposed by high earners? The answer isn’t as obvious as you might think, because most workers with earnings above the cap stand to lose more from benefit cuts than from higher taxes. If nothing is done to shore up Social Security’s finances, EPI estimates that 70% of workers aged 32–66 who earned more than the taxable maximum in 2024 would lose more in benefit cuts than they would pay in higher taxes if the cap were scrapped.

The remaining 30% of these high earners, would, however, be better off losing 22.4% of their benefits beginning in 2034 than paying Social Security taxes on earnings above the cap. Unfortunately, this group includes politically influential multi-millionaires and billionaires.

Figure A

Figure A shows the break-even line below which workers are better off paying taxes on earnings above the cap than experiencing benefit cuts sufficient to eliminate the projected shortfall. For example, if the cap were eliminated, a worker who was 35 years old and earned below $236,000 in 2024 would pay taxes on earnings above the cap through age 66, but the value of these additional taxes would be lower than the value of forgone benefits if these were reduced by 22.4% (the amount necessary to restore the system to long-term balance).

Ultimately, most high earners stand to lose more from potential Social Security benefit cuts than from paying taxes on earnings above the cap. Scrapping the cap remains the most fair and practical path to safeguarding Social Security for future generations.

Methodology

This exercise assumes benefits are reduced across the board by the amount needed to restore the system to long-term balance (22.4%). This is a deeper cut than the initial 19% cut that would happen automatically in 2034 if nothing were done to increase revenues (a cut, however, that would increase to 28% over the projection period). It is, however, less than the 26.8% cut that would be needed to restore the system to long-term balance if retirees and others already receiving benefits are spared from cuts in 2034.

Real earnings are assumed to grow steadily by 1.13% per year, the Social Security actuaries’ long-term wage growth assumption. Future values are discounted to the present using a 2.3% real interest rate, also based on the actuaries’ long-term assumption. Life expectancy in retirement varies by birth year and is based on the actuaries’ cohort life expectancy tables, averaged between men and women.

The working age range covers 35 years before age 67, Social Security’s normal retirement age for most current workers. For many workers, these are their highest-paid 35 years and therefore the earnings that factor into Social Security benefit calculations.

The shares of workers with earnings above the cap and with earnings below the break-even amounts are estimated based on March 2025 Current Population Survey annual earnings microdata accessed through IPUMS, which reflect earnings over the previous 12 months. Break-even earnings are rounded to the nearest $1000.

A new measure of poverty that accounts for health care needs and resources being developed by the U.S. Census Bureau—the Health Inclusive Poverty Measure (HIPM)—shows that poverty affects even more people in the U.S. than the typical statistics estimate. This is particularly true for people of color. This is primarily a function of the limited access to health insurance that Black and Hispanic communities endure. Black and Hispanic individuals, for example, are more likely than peers to be uninsured and to rely on Medicaid for coverage. This is why we warned about the uneven impact of cuts to the program early this year.

Policymakers are currently debating the merits surrounding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace subsidies that help more than 20 million people afford health insurance and kept nearly 2 million people out of poverty in 2024. These subsidies were introduced through the American Rescue Plan and extended through the Inflation Reduction Act; they increase the accessibility of health insurance by subsidizing the amount eligible individuals pay for the “benchmark”—i.e., the second-lowest tier plan on a sliding scale with income—such that most individuals making near-poverty wages can access these plans for free.

Allowing the ACA premium enhanced tax subsidies to expire will increase health inclusive poverty across groups, but the impact will be felt most heavily by those for whom accessing health insurance was already precarious. These households are disproportionately Black, brown, and working class because those households sit at the margin of health insurance affordability under normal circumstances and have seen the largest increases in insurance rates during the period when the enhanced tax credits have been available.

Communities of color trying to obtain health coverage now face attacks on two fronts. The more economically vulnerable among them face a more financially constrained Medicaid program with more stringent work requirements, purposefully meant to reduce access to health care. And those fortunate enough to afford care via the ACA marketplace now face the rising prospect of being priced out of coverage if the credits are allowed to expire this month. If the subsidies are allowed to expire, those who previously had free access to the benchmark ACA plans would lose it. The poorest eligible families would see the largest percentage increase in their annual health insurance premiums, while families with higher incomes would experience a higher dollar amount increase.

The end result of this two-pronged attack on public health, not to mention the dismantling of the country’s public health infrastructure that the Trump-Vance administration has carefully orchestrated since coming into office, will be an increase in the number of uninsured individuals, higher economic insecurity for families who need health care but can’t afford coverage, and increased poverty. These forces, as we illustrate below, will affect people of color unevenly.

Health inclusive poverty reveals deeper economic pain than monetary poverty—the attack on Medicaid and health subsidies will make things worse

More than 50 million people struggled with health inclusive poverty last year. This means more than one in seven (14.8%) individuals grappled with economic insecurity because they lack the resources to meet their health and broader needs (see Figure A). 

Figure A

The HIPM produced by the U.S. Census Bureau researchers broadens the basket of goods and services that families need to maintain an adequate standard of living beyond the two measures of poverty that the Bureau publishes annually. These two measures include the Official Poverty Measure (OPM) and the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). While the SPM goes further than the OPM to account for geographic differences in housing costs, tax credits, and government benefits (like SNAP), it doesn’t incorporate health care benefits, subsidies, and expenses like the HIPM. The HIPM therefore enables us to examine the extent to which access to health insurance and key health care subsidies impact the standard of living of individuals and families.

As observed in Figure A, health inclusive poverty has exceeded monetary poverty in the U.S. for the greater part of the last decade. Last year, for example, the prevalence of health inclusive poverty was more than 4 percentage points higher than the incidence of poverty measured by the OPM, and about 2 percentage points higher than the SPM. Access to health insurance serves as a key driver of the differences we observe between estimates of monetary and health inclusive poverty. This is because uninsured individuals have zero health insurance resources to offset the health care needs that the health inclusive measure of poverty introduces to the original poverty thresholds under the SPM.

Recent policy choices under the Turmp-Vance administration are likely to further widen the gap between these measures. The Republican Budget Reconciliation bill is projected to increase the number of uninsured individuals by more than 10 million in the years ahead, and the expiration of health care subsidies under the Affordable Care Act marketplace will quadruple the average net premiums for the more economically vulnerable and increase the number of uninsured individuals by nearly 5 million in 2026.

In 2024 alone, Medicaid kept about 15 million people out of poverty and health care subsidies that made health insurance more affordable for people in the ACA marketplace kept nearly 2 million people out of poverty. Without these support systems, about 17 more million people would have fallen below the poverty line in 2024, pushing the poverty rate from 14.8% to around 19.8%.

Health inclusive poverty affects people of color disproportionately

Black, Hispanic, and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) individuals are more than twice as likely as their white peers to face economic hardship due to insufficient resources to meet their health and material needs. Last year, more than one in five Black, Hispanic, and AIAN people fell below the health inclusive poverty line (see Figure B).

Figure B

While the prevalence of health inclusive poverty exceeds that of monetary poverty for all racial and ethnic groups, the divide is starkest for Black, Hispanic, and AIAN individuals (as shown in Figure B). Compared with their non-Hispanic white peers, the percentage point difference between health and monetary poverty is more than twice as large for Black individuals and more than five times as large for Hispanic and AIAN individuals. These disparities are driven by unequal access to health insurance, as the uninsured rate is highest for Hispanic, AIAN, and Black individuals. More than one in six Hispanic and AIAN people, for example, lack access to health insurance. These groups are more than three times as likely as their white peers to lack access to health insurance. Slightly narrower, but just as harmful, disparities affect Black individuals. In 2024, more than 3.5 million Black people struggled without access to health insurance.

Statistically meaningful differences between both poverty measures are largest in Southern states, where communities of color make up a relatively larger share of the population. States where social and economic policy have historically been rooted in racism are also less likely to have expanded access to Medicaid. Census researchers find that states with expanded access to Medicaid coverage have health inclusive poverty estimates that are more than 2 percentage points lower than states without expanded access.

Black and brown people, as well as the working class and uninsured, skip or postpone needed health care due to cost

The U.S. health care system is designed such that access to adequate and timely care is based on a person’s ability to pay and often based on whether they are employed. Access to health insurance mediates access to health care, and employment is a major mediating factor for access to both health insurance and the income necessary to pay any out-of-pocket costs associated with care. In greed-driven health care systems like ours, poorer workers and their families often forgo or delay treatment that could improve or extend their lives because they can’t afford it.

Black and brown households are more likely to be uninsured, to report difficulties with reporting health care costs, and to report skipping or postponing needed health care within the past year than their white and Asian counterparts. Lack of access to adequate and timely care has long-term economic and health implications for Black and brown families and communities. Policies that threaten the already tenuous connection that marginalized groups have to the health care system, e.g., allowing the ACA premium tax credits to expire and restricting access to Medicaid, will contribute to the persistence of economic and health inequities across race and class.

HIPM underscores the economic and public policy imperative of expanding health care access to prevent poverty

The HIPM captures the impact of overlapping economic and public health policies—or lack of effective policies—on households’ exposure to poverty. It shows how policies like Medicare, Medicaid, and expansions to the Affordable Care Act protect families from financial distress and uncertainty. Racial and geographic differences in the HIPM highlight the variation in adequacy different groups experience across our patchwork health care system. It also helps us identify the impact that recent and ongoing policy choices will have on public health and equity.

The federal cuts to Medicaid that President Trump signed into law this summer, as well as the potential expiration of ACA health insurance subsidies, will disproportionately impact communities of color. Cuts to Medicaid will hurt Black and Hispanic adults and children most, as they are more likely than their peers to rely on Medicaid and CHIP for health insurance. The potential expiration of ACA subsidies will undoubtedly compound health inequities, pushing more than 2 million people of color into ranks of the uninsured. With both private and public options for health insurance falling further out of reach for the most disadvantaged, the administration’s attack on the country’s public health infrastructure will worsen health outcomes, widen disparities, and deepen the growing economic vulnerability of families struggling under Trump’s affordability crisis.

This is part 2 of a two-part series analyzing the impact of an amendment to the House Homeland appropriations bill on the H-2A and H-2B visa programs. Read part 1 here.

Key takeaways:

• The government funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may include a rider amendment that would establish a new methodology for setting the H-2B visa program’s annual numerical limit. This amendment (originally known as Amendment #1 but later dubbed the Bipartisan Visa En Bloc amendment) would result in a cap of at least 252,000 visas in fiscal year (FY) 2026.
• H-2B visa extensions and job changes are not counted against the annual cap, but after adding them to the updated cap of 252,000, the total number of H-2B workers employed in FY 2026 would be 282,000, which is almost 113,000 greater than the total number of workers in 2024 and 2025.
• The rider would move 12,000 H-2B workers employed at carnivals, traveling fairs, and circuses to the P visa, which lacks any numerical limit on the number of visas, further expanding the number of exploitable workers in H-2B industries.
• The rider would restrict the already limited ability of H-2A and H-2B workers to change employers, leaving them more exploitable and vulnerable to workplace violations.
• This amendment in Congress would mainly benefit employers by allowing them to gradually hire an exponentially higher number of workers they can control, while undercutting labor standards for all workers.

In part 1 of this two-part blog post series, I provided background and discussion on a rider amendment that the Homeland Security subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee proposed and passed over the summer. Originally known as Amendment #1 but later dubbed the Bipartisan Visa En Bloc amendment, it would make major changes to the H-2A and H-2B visa programs through the appropriations process, while completely circumventing the committees that should have subject matter jurisdiction in the House and Senate. Part 1 focuses on the changes and impacts in the H-2A program; this post will briefly explain the components of the rider that would make changes to the H-2B visa program and the impact of those changes, as well as one change that would affect both programs.

The H-2B program has been expanded through appropriations riders every year since fiscal year 2016

Two of my previous reports provide a fuller explanation of the background on the size of the H-2B program and a history of the legislative riders in appropriations bills that have been used to expand the size of the H-2B program. A quick recap here is warranted. In fiscal year 2016, Congress authorized a “returning worker” exemption through appropriations legislation to fund the operation of the U.S. government. The legislation exempted H-2B workers from the annual H-2B cap of 66,000 that is set in law, for fiscal year 2016, if the workers hired were previously in H-2B status in any of the preceding three fiscal years. There was no cap on the number of returning H-2B workers under the exemption.

In each year since FY 2017, Congress has, through appropriations riders, given the executive branch the discretionary legal authority to roughly double the number of H-2B visas available. Rather than specify the level of increase for the H-2B program, appropriators have passed the buck instead to the executive branch—perhaps because they didn’t want the responsibility or criticism that may come from setting a specific number—by directing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in consultation with the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), to determine how many additional H-2B visas are appropriate, if any. DHS has interpreted the rider language as allowing them to issue up to 64,716 “supplemental” visas in the corresponding fiscal year. In total, it has been 10 years (FY 2016–2025) since Congress first permitted increases to the size of the H-2B program through an appropriations rider. The Biden administration in 2023, 2024, and 2025 used the full authority granted to the executive branch in the legislative riders, raising the total H-2B annual limit to 130,716.

The appropriations rider would create a new methodology to expand the H-2B cap by at least 100,000

The rider takes a different approach to allowing a higher number of H-2B visas to be issued in FY 2026. The language of the amendment states that for every employer who has had any H-2B positions certified in the past five fiscal years (2021–2025), the highest number that they had certified in those years will be the number of H-2B workers they may hire who will not count against the annual cap of 66,000. In other words, if an employer had 10 jobs certified in 2021, 15 in 2022, 20 in 2023, 100 in 2024, and 50 in 2025, they would be allowed to hire 100 H-2B workers in 2026 without them counting against the 66,000 cap.

To calculate how many workers could be hired in 2026 under this formula, a colleague and I matched employer records from DOL and identified the employers who had at least one approved H-2B job in each of the years between 2020 to 2024. (Full year data for 2025 were not available at the time of writing, so 2020–2024 are used as a proxy.) Altogether, 186,342 H-2B workers would have been exempted from the annual cap under this formula. This is almost certainly a low-end estimate because the number of H-2B jobs certified in 2020 was lower than normal because of the bureaucratic shutdowns and slowdowns caused by the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Table 1 shows an estimate for 2020–2024 that serves as a proxy for our estimate on the number of new H-2B workers who will be exempted from the cap in 2026 and also lists the number of new H-2B workers who will be permitted under the regular annual cap of 66,000. Altogether, the regular cap plus the supplemental cap for H-2B in 2026 would permit at least 252,342 new workers if the language in the rider becomes law. That’s an increase of almost 100%, relative to the total cap in 2023–2025, and a 282% increase, relative to the original H-2B cap of 66,000.

It’s also important to note that the annual caps and total number of workers will grow exponentially in the following years after 2026 if Congress reauthorizes the same language in the rider year after year, as they’ve done with past H-2B riders. This will occur because employers will have an incentive to apply to DOL for labor certification for as many H-2B jobs as possible because that will increase the size of their exemption from the cap for the following year.

Table 1 Total number of H-2B workers would reach 282,000 in 2026 if the rider becomes law

In a recent report, I showed that in 2024, when 64,716 supplemental H-2B visas were added to the statutory cap of 66,000, for a total cap of 130,716, there were a total of 169,177 H-2B workers. This was up from 75,122 total H-2B workers just a decade earlier. The nearly 170,000 total in 2024 included 139,541 H-2B workers with newly issued visas from the State Department, and 4,580 H-2B workers who had their employment extended with the same employer. An additional 25,056 were H-2B workers who changed employers. Workers who extend their H-2B status or change jobs are not counted against the annual cap. (In 2025 the cap was identical to the previous year; thus, final numbers for 2025 are likely to be very similar to 2024.)

To get a better sense of the total number of H-2B workers who would be employed in 2026 if the rider became law, I estimated that the same number of workers who extended their status or changed jobs in 2024 would also do so in 2026, and added that total to the 2026 total cap that would result from the rider. This is illustrated in Figure A, which shows the total number of H-2B workers from 2017 to 2024, and projections for 2025 and 2026. The annual cap plus the supplemental cap, together with H-2B extensions and job changes, will result in nearly 282,000 H-2B workers being employed in 2026—almost 113,000 more workers than were employed in 2024 and 2025.

Figure A The rider would move 12,000 H-2B jobs to the P visa, which is not administered by the Department of Labor

The other notable change in the rider when it comes to the H-2B program is that H-2B workers employed at carnivals, traveling fairs, and circuses would be moved to the P visa program. According to DOL, in FY 2024 there were 12,398 H-2B jobs certified in the “Amusement and Recreation Attendants” occupation, which is the relevant occupation that would be moved to the P visa. There would be no annual cap on the number of amusement and carnival workers who could be employed in the P visa program.

At present, the P visa is a little-known program intended for use by professional athletes and coaches, members of an internationally recognized entertainment group, or persons performing under a reciprocal exchange program or as part of a culturally unique program. At present, the P visa program has no wage rules or worker protections and is administered exclusively by DHS, which has no staff or expertise on worker rights. This is extremely troubling, given that H-2B workers employed at carnivals and traveling fairs work grueling hours and in terrible conditions, making them some of the most exploited H-2B workers—as advocacy groups have pointed out. These workers are often paid below the minimum wage and are not paid for overtime hours. Yet DOL would no longer have any formal oversight role to ensure they are protected.

The rider language says that employers hiring H-2B carnival workers through the P visa “shall be subject to the same program requirements” of the H-2B program, which are administered by DOL. It also directs DHS and DOL to each separately publish regulations to implement H-2B carnival workers being moved to the P visa program within 180 days and finalize them within one year.

The legislators who support this amendment have provided no explanation or rationale for why it makes sense to create an entirely new process and set of regulations to move one of the biggest H-2B occupations from DOL into DHS—an agency that will be given primary responsibility over the P visa and protecting carnival workers, but which has no mandate or expertise on labor standards and employment laws. The most obvious explanation is that this legislative maneuver is simply a new way to expand the H-2B cap even beyond 252,000, in a way that gives carnival employers an unlimited supply of workers who can be exploited and underpaid. It also seems absurd to put a low-paid traveling carnival worker into the same visa category—where there’s no labor oversight—as a professional baseball player coming from abroad to sign a multimillion-dollar contract with a major league team, or a world-famous singer, dancer, or painter.

House Homeland Security appropriations rider would defund the H-2 modernization rule, restricting the ability of H-2 workers to change jobs and leave abusive employment situations

One other notable section in the rider that impacts both the H-2A and H-2B programs would prohibit DHS from spending funds to implement a regulation that took effect in January 2024—often referred to as the H-2 modernization rule. The rule, among other things, requires additional scrutiny of applications from employers that have violated the law, makes it easier for H-2 workers to be eligible for green cards through existing pathways, and expands the ability of H-2A and H-2B workers to change employers (this is referred to as visa “portability”), making it easier to leave an abusive employment situation. The regulation is far from perfect. As EPI and other advocates have pointed out, the portability provisions require additional measures to make visa portability a more practical reality, rather than just a right that exists on paper and one that can be hijacked by employers seeking to circumvent the annual cap.

Nevertheless, these three provisions in the H-2 modernization rule can undoubtedly help some workers, reducing the indentured nature of the visa programs by tilting the balance of power ever so slightly in the direction of workers. And that’s likely the exact reason that the employers and legislators pushing for the rider included this provision to defund the rule.

The H-2B program needs reforms to improve labor protections and provide H-2B workers with a pathway to citizenship

The appropriations committees in the House and Senate should not continue using parliamentary tactics to make changes to the H-2B program that would likely not pass in Congress through regular order. Instead, Congress should work with the executive branch to reform the H-2B program in the following ways: 

• ensure U.S. workers are considered for open temporary and seasonal jobs 
• craft updated wage rules that protect U.S. wage standards for all workers in H-2B industries
• provide migrant workers with new protections and allow them to more easily change jobs
• provide migrant workers with a quick path to a green card and citizenship
• prohibit lawbreaking employers from hiring through the H-2B program

As EPI and other advocates have long said, these genuine reforms are the only way to ensure that the workers playing vital roles in the U.S. economy are not being exploited and underpaid and that their employers are not able to use visa programs as an employment law loophole that ultimately erodes job quality for all.

 

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has vetoed a bill that would have extended the number of hours that employers can schedule 14–15-year-olds to work on school nights, in violation of federal law. DeWine vetoed the bill last week after advocates from a long list of child health and welfare, education , organized labor, and economic justice organizations publicly urged him to oppose the bill.

DeWine’s decision reflects conclusions backed up by decades of research and public policy experience. As his veto message emphasizes, existing work hour guidelines—providing young teens (under 16) opportunities to gain work experience “after school up to 7 p.m.”—have been “in place, across this country, for many years” and have “served us well” and “effectively balanced the importance of 14- and 15-year-old children learning to work, with the importance of them having time to study.”

If enacted, the Ohio bill in question (SB 50) would have allowed longer, later work hours—up to 9 p.m. on school nights for children as young as 14—that can interfere with young teens’ education, sleep, health, and development. Studies have consistently shown that intensive work at a young age is associated with poor academic outcomes; longer hours raise the risk of work-related illness and injury; and work later into the night exacerbates sleep deprivation that in turn can interfere with teens’ education and well-being. Allowing employers to schedule young teens to work until 9 p.m. also increases the likelihood of nighttime driving for new drivers (minors can be permitted to drive at age 15.5 in Ohio), an additional risk factor for accidents. Motor vehicle crashes are already the leading cause of death for teens and young adults, who are three times more likely to die in a car accident than adults over 20. For all these reasons, federal law limits the maximum number of working hours for young teens to three hours per night or 18 hours a week and prohibits work past 7 p.m. on school days.

At a moment when the U.S. faces a reemerging crisis of rising child labor violations and when Ohio is taking steps to decrease teen driving fatalities, DeWine’s veto is a sensible, informed response to harmful legislation. It also marks a hopeful next stage in ongoing state-level struggles to maintain and strengthen essential child labor protections in the face of a coordinated, industry-backed campaign to weaken child labor standards—first at the state level, and eventually nationwide.

Veto spares Ohio employers from confusing conflict between state and federal law, while threats to erode federal child labor standards still loom

Governor DeWine also appears to have taken to heart and, wisely, acted on lessons his fellow policymakers learned the hard way in other states where similar legislation has been proposed or enacted in recent years.

Ohio’s SB 50 would have allowed employers to schedule 14–15-year-olds to work until 9 p.m. on school days, two hours later than allowed under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Because states can legislate above FLSA standards but not below, the proposed new state standards would have conflicted directly with federal law, sowing confusion for parents, teens, and employers, and putting employers at risk of being charged with federal child labor violations if they chose to follow weaker state guidelines.

This exact scenario played out recently in Iowa when, despite strong warnings from labor advocates and U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) officials, Governor Kim Reynolds signed a 2023 bill that included multiple provisions conflicting with federal child labor law. Once the Iowa bill went into effect, information from state agencies and employer groups (including the Iowa Restaurant Association) sowed confusion by suggesting that employers could now abide by weaker new state standards. Then, after a number of restaurants faced federal child labor investigations and fines for violating the FLSA in 2024, Governor Reynolds publicly defended the illegal employer practices—in part with (unsubstantiated) claims that the businesses were being unfairly targeted by the DOL, and by calling on the federal government to stop enforcing existing child labor laws and instead “look to Iowa as an example” of how to handle child labor.

A concurrent resolution accompanying the Ohio bill, which was adopted by both chambers, similarly called on Congress to weaken the FLSA by adopting Ohio’s proposal for longer school-night hours for young teens as the new federal standard. By repeatedly proposing—and in some cases implementing—standards that conflict with federal law, legislators in states like Iowa and Ohio have attempted to chip away at the already fragile federal floor for workplace protections. Federal child labor standards are also under direct threat. The Project 2025 policy agenda closely followed by the Trump administration recommends lifting prohibitions on hazardous child labor and allowing states to opt out of the FLSA entirely.

In light of continuing threats, states have a critical role to play in defending and strengthening child labor standards

Ohio’s SB 50 and its 2023 predecessor were both sponsored by the same state senator with the support of industry groups whose members would benefit from weaker child labor laws—the Ohio Restaurant and Hospitality Alliance, National Federation of Independent Business in Ohio, and the Pickerington Chamber of Commerce—as well as Americans for Prosperity, a right-wing, billionaire-backed dark money group that has coordinated state-by-state legislative campaigns to weaken child labor laws across the country, often alongside the right-wing think tank Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA).

Governor DeWine now joins a growing number of governors and state legislators who have stood up in opposition to these attacks. For example, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers vetoed an FGA-sponsored bill last year that would have eliminated the state’s effective, commonsense youth work permit system. Some have even gone further to propose or support legislation that strengthens state child labor standards, with lawmakers in more than a dozen states proposing legislation or administrative rules to protect minors from hazardous or exploitative work, deter child labor violations, and increase accountability for law-breaking employers.

Governor DeWine, after hearing the voices of numerous parents, educators, health care, and driving safety experts, concluded that a veto of SB 50 was “in the public interest.” Given evidence that industry campaigns to weaken child labor laws are continuing (and the very real risk that aspects of federal child labor protections could face similar threats from the same forces), more states should pursue critical opportunities and responsibilities in 2026 to—at the very least—defend the long-standing, minimal floor set by the FLSA and, wherever possible, to strengthen state standards that ensure young teens who work can do so without damaging their health or education.