"The Canner Kids of Baltimore, 1909 Baltimore’s oyster and vegetable canneries ran on children. “Canner Kids” started at 4am, shucked oysters or snipped beans for 14 hours, and slept in the cannery. Ages 4 to 14. No school. No gloves.
8-year-old Mamie “Bean” Kowalski was a bean snipper. Her job was to break off the ends – 2 tons per day to make $1. Her fingers bled into the beans. At night she hid under the tables and slept there because the walk to the tenement was too far.
In 1909, Lewis Hine photographed her. He asked her age. She said “I don’t remember.” He asked what she wanted to be. She said “I’d like to go to school.” The photo ran nationally with the caption “The Price of Beans.”
Public fury forced Maryland to pass its first child labor law in 1912. Mamie got to 4th grade before she had to work again. She kept Hine’s photo her whole life.
All things considered the fact that the average was ~8% of kids ages 10 to 15 working is better than I expected.
I mean it should be 0 but I bet you the USA has a lot of hidden (and not so hidden in some places) child labor too. Probably not near that 8 percent level but some states are really pushing to get rid of child labor laws.
Hiding such a thing in the USA would be next to impossible. Trump couldn't even hide large swaths of the Epstein Files. There simply isn't a singular authority with the power to hide it, simple as.
I do admit it also isn't 0, though. In agriculture it's been common practice and there was a widely publicized case at a meat packaging plant a while back.