Youth employment in the United States: data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 show substantial work activity among 14- and 15-year-olds

Monthly Labor Review, August, 2001 by Donna S. Rothstein

Today's youths commonly gain employment experience through working for a particular employer, such as a fast-food restaurant, or through a less formal arrangement, such as babysitting for a neighbor. The purpose of this article is to provide a detailed profile of the employment of today's youths using round-1 data from a new survey of youth: the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97). The article reports the incidence, intensity, and timing of youth employment (school vs. summer), shows the industries and occupations in which youths commonly work, and examines employment differences across gender, race, ethnic group, household income, and family structure.

Data and definitions

The data presented are from the first interview of the NLSY97, a nationally representative sample of about 9,000 young men and women who were born between January 1, 1980, and December 31, 1984. (1) The first interview took place in 1997, when these youths were aged 12 to 17 years. The NLSY97 collects extensive information on youths' labor market experiences, in addition to information on a wide array of other topics, such as schooling and family background. Members of the sample are interviewed annually. (2)

Early work experience can include "employee" jobs, wherein a youth has an ongoing relationship with a particular employer, such as a job working in a supermarket or restaurant, and "freelance" jobs, in which the youth does one or a few tasks without a specific "boss," such as babysitting, mowing lawns, or working for oneself. The NLSY97 seeks to gather a longitudinal record of youths' employment experiences, rather than taking a snapshot of their labor market status at a particular point in time. (3) In order to accomplish this, survey respondents aged 14 and older are asked to list all employee jobs they held from the age of 14 to the date of the interview. A calendar is filled out by the interviewer and is shown to the respondent to confirm all beginning and ending dates of employee jobs, as well as any gaps between those dates within which the respondent did not work. Respondents also provide other information about each employee job held, such as the industry and occupation into which the job was classified. Next, respondents 14 and older are asked to list all freelance jobs they held from the age of 14 to the date of the interview. Again, a calendar is used to confirm all beginning and ending dates of freelance jobs. Due to the sporadic nature of freelance jobs, however, data on periods of nonwork between those dates are not collected. Respondents also provide information on the characteristics of each freelance job they held.

Tables in the sections that follow describe youth employment in employee jobs and freelance jobs at some time during a specific period, including "at age 14" and "at age 15." When a youth is said to have worked "at age 14," for example, the reference is to the youth having worked at some time during the entire 52-week period between the youth's 14th and 15th birthdays. (4) Because the NLSY97 collects data on all employment spells in employee jobs, it is possible to determine whether a youth did any work at all while he or she was a particular age and also to determine how many weeks the youth worked at that age. The method the analysis that follows uses to determine whether an individual worked at a freelance job at a particular age is less precise than that used for employee jobs, because only data on beginning and ending employment dates are collected. If a period between any freelance job's beginning and ending date spans any of the weeks the respondent was 14 (for example), the respondent is defined as having worked in a freelance job at age 14. This approach may overstate youths' incidence of employment in freelance jobs: the data do not allow one to calculate the number of weeks a respondent worked at such a job.

Over the years, policymakers have been concerned about youth employment during the school term. (5) The nature of the NLSY97 data on employee jobs allows one to calculate the percentage of youths working during the school year or during the summer (or both). One can also calculate the percentage of school and summer weeks that youths work in employee jobs. It is convenient to depict the timing of youth employment (especially graphically) during a calendar year, rather than at a particular age. Tables and charts on the timing of youth employment are shown for calendar year 1996, for one birth year: 1981. These youths were 15 as of December 31, 1996, and thus ranged from 14 to 15 years old in 1996.

Unlike most data sets, the NLSY97 captures employment of the very young. The survey asks all youths aged 12 or 13 at the interview date about all of their work activities since the age of 12. The survey does not distinguish between employment in freelance and employee jobs for this age group, but the structure of the questions is similar to that of questions asked of older youths in the freelance section. In this article, the incidence of employment of the very young is measured over the year youths are age 12. (6)