Yes. A spouse in L-2 status is employment-authorized incident to status and may work for any employer, without a separate application, though many spouses still obtain the document employers like to copy.
The spouse's permission is broad here
This is one of the practical advantages of the transfer route over the professional one. Her employment authorization comes from the status itself rather than from a separate approval, so she may take a job with an unrelated employer, work part-time, or start something of her own, subject to the ordinary licensing rules for whatever she does. Children under twenty-one may attend school but may not work, and their status ends with the principal's, so a child approaching twenty-one during the posting needs a plan of their own. If she intends to work in a regulated occupation, treat the state licensing process as a separate project with its own timetable, because immigration permission and professional licensure are decided by different bodies and neither waits for the other.
Hypothetical example: a refrigeration-distribution manager moves with a spouse who is considering a licensed esthetics practice. Their first review produces two tracks: the principal's petition dates and the spouse's state licensing requirements. The spouse's L-2S admission record is the document used to establish work authorization, while the licensing board decides whether she may offer the regulated service. They should sequence enrollment, examinations and relocation so the family does not assume that one approval supplies the other. A child nearing twenty-one needs a separate school or immigration plan before the family relies on derivative status.
- USCIS — L-1A intracompany transferee executive or manager
- USCIS Policy Manual — L-1 evidence (Vol. 2, Part L, Ch. 8)
- 8 CFR 214.2(l) — intracompany transferees
- 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(44) — managerial and executive capacity
- USCIS Policy Manual — employment authorization for certain spouses
- USCIS — fee schedule (G-1055)