In order to explore the movement law of overburden in shallow coal seam with different mining face lengths, the 22306 face of Shigetai Coal Mine is studied as the engineering background. The relationship between the mining face lengths and the overburden pressure arch height is studied through theoretical analysis. The plastic failure range of overburden under different mining face lengths is calculated based on numerical simulation. The reasonable mining face length is determined by combining the theoretical analysis and numerical calculation results, and the reliability of the research results is verified with the field industrial test. The results show that the longer the mining face is, the higher the overburden pressure arch height is. When the buried depth of the mining face is less than twice the pressure arch height, a stable pressure arch cannot be formed in the overburden. The plastic failure range of overburden is positively correlated with the length of mining face, but when the length of mining face increases to a certain range, the development speed of plastic zone is gentle. The results of on-site hydraulic support working resistance monitoring and tunnel surrounding rock deformation observation show that the length of 290m mining face can fully ensure the safe mining of 22306 mining face.