452 children died on job from 2003-16

Child labor exists in the United States in the 21st century. It’s legal and widespread, but it differs enough from the work you remember from headlines and textbooks that you may not have noticed.

It’s also, in some cases, dangerous. Children were killed on the job in construction, retail, transportation and even manufacturing and logging. But most of them, 52 percent, died working in agriculture.

A 12-year-old was cleaning drainage systems in Tennessee in March when an ATV flipped onto him. He died from his injuries. A 14-yearold boy was trapped in eight feet of feed in a silo while working with his father on a Wisconsin dairy farm in June — they both died. A 14-year-old was crushed to death by a New Holland LS170 Skidloader when attempting to move bales of hay on a dairy farm in Upstate New York in 2014. A 16-year-old construction worker in Missouri was struck and killed by a swinging crane that same year

About 452 children died as a result of workplace injuries between 2003 and 2016, according to the Government Accountability Office. Seventy-three of those who died were age 12 or younger.

Children working in agriculture are killed at a far higher rate than their peers in other industries. Farmworkers make up less than a fifth of America’s child workforce — perhaps much less — yet they suffered more deaths between 2003 and 2016 than all other child workers combined.

Young workers made up a small fraction of all those injured on the job. The government doesn’t have a comprehensive measure of the child workforce, but it tracks deaths carefully.