http://eprints.unimelb.edu.au/archive/00000236/

Just a phase in life? School students and part-time work

This is an empirical investigation of Australian secondary school students who have part-time jobs. It is based on analyses of national longitudinal data covering a period of almost twenty years, from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s. Data from four separate age-based cohorts of young people are analysed, with a focus on the youngest cohort, that born in 1975, as well as additional data from a more recent sample of students who were in Year 9 in 1995. The extent of student involvement in part-time work is described, with reference to rates of employment and to average hours worked per week. Although there is some variation by age and year level, by the early 1990s one third of senior school students spent an average of nine hours per week in a part-time job. The background characteristics of student-workers are examined. Students who were lower school achievers were less likely to be employed, as were those from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds. These patterns, matching observations from other countries in which there are comparable or higher rates of student employment, indicate that some students may be disadvantaged in this part-time job market. Students had generally positive perceptions of their jobs. A large proportion enjoyed their work, and the money and the independence that it gave them, and they believed it would improve their future employment prospects. Apart from these subjective views of students, the longitudinal nature of these data enabled the outcomes of in-school employment to be investigated.

Part-time work was not found to be harmful to educational outcomes, measured by school completion, final year results, or transition rates to tertiary study. Significant benefits were found in the post-school labour market, where student-workers experienced less unemployment in the first few years after leaving school than did non-workers.

Such findings lend support to the argument that early experience in the labour market is one way of achieving a smoother transition from school to work.