Youth employment during school: results from two longitudinal surveys; students who worked 20 or fewer hours per week during the school year were more likely to attend college; youths who worked a greater percentage of weeks during the school year worked more consistently when they reached ages 18 to 30

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

Educational attainment at age 30. More than half of those who averaged 20 or fewer hours of work per school week at ages 16 and 17 had at least some college education by age 30. (See chart 1.) By contrast, by age 30, less than half of those who did not work at all or who worked more than 20 hours a week at ages 16 and 17 had attained at least some college education. These findings hold regardless of whether one worked more or less than 50 percent of school weeks, and the same pattern is also generally found for 30-year-old men and women separately. (See chart 2.)

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The findings apply to whites as well (see chart 3), but the educational attainment of blacks and Hispanics is not as clearly related to the hours they worked at 16 and 17. With one exception, blacks who did not work at all at those ages were significantly less likely than blacks who did work to have at least some college education by age 30. The lone exception is the group that worked 50 percent or less of school weeks and averaged 21 or more hours per week. More than 60 percent of Hispanics who worked more than 50 percent of school weeks, but fewer than 20 hours a week, had some college education by age 30, whereas much less than half of Hispanics in each of the other weeks-and-hours-of-work categories had any college education.

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Work experience, ages 18 through 30. The NLSY79 collects extensive employment data from respondents. The analysis that follows uses this detailed work history information to examine the percentage of weeks worked by individuals over the years when they are aged 18 through 30. The analysis continues to focus on groups divided by hours and weeks of work undertaken by those attending school at ages 16 and 17.

The data show a general pattern: each step up in the percentage of school weeks worked at the aforementioned ages is associated with a step up in the percentage of weeks worked during the next 13 years, regardless of the category of hours worked per week. More specifically, individuals who did not work during school weeks at ages 16 and 17 worked 64 percent of weeks from ages 18 through 30 (see table 5), and those who worked 50 percent or less of school weeks at ages 16 and 17 worked an average of 74 percent of weeks from ages 18 to 30. The percentage was even higher (between 82 percent and 84 percent, depending on the category of hours worked per week) for youths who worked more than 50 percent of school weeks at those ages. This overall step-up pattern also holds over ages 18 through 30 for both men and women and regardless of race or ethnicity. Furthermore, the pattern essentially holds for the narrower age ranges of 18 to 22, 23 to 26, and 27 to 30. In general, the percentage of weeks worked rises from ages 18 to 22 to ages 23 to 26 and then remains steady at ages 27 to 30.

Tables in this article indicate that white youths tend to work more than black youths. Whites also typically work more weeks from ages 18 to 30 than do blacks, regardless of the number of hours or weeks they work while they are in school. The sole exception is that, for those individuals who worked more than 50 percent of school weeks and averaged 21 or more hours per week while they were young, there was no significant difference between the percentage of weeks worked by blacks and whites from ages 18 through 30.