WW-07565     2000  

St. Paul Youths' Transition from School to Work

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JEYLAN MORTIMER

The Youth Development Study (YDS) is a 12-year longitudinal study of approximately 1,100 youth in St. Paul. Starting when students were in ninth grade, the YDS has tracked whether the participants worked in high school, how many hours they worked, what types of jobs they held and what kind of experiences they gained from their jobs. After they left high school, their education, work and other experiences continued to be surveyed annually. The St. Paul Youths' Transition from School to Work Project examines youths' subjective experience of the transition from school to work by conducting face-to-face interviews with YDS participants in their mid-twenties. The study is an in-depth exploration of the factors promoting change or continuity in occupational plans.

Jeylan Mortimer is Professor of Sociology, University of Minnesota.

Introduction

Employment and productivity are integral factors affecting the resiliency of communities. Yet current research suggests that today's youth are having difficulties making occupational choices. Youth are seen in some instances to be floundering, to be entering the full-time work force at later ages, and changing careers frequently. A better understanding of the process youth go through in making work-related decisions is crucial to developing effective educational and job training policy. The Youth Development Study (YDS), a 12-year longitudinal study of approximately 1,100 youth in St. Paul, provides much information about the experiences of today's youth in Minnesota. Starting when students were in ninth grade, the YDS has tracked whether the participants worked in high school, how many hours they worked, what types of jobs they held and what kind of experiences they gained from their jobs. After they left high school, their education, work and other experiences continued to be surveyed annually. In addition, during their children's high school years, the parents of YDS participants were surveyed to learn their views about their children's work. Findings from the YDS elucidate the important role of work in the lives of youth.

We are currently conducting in-depth, open-ended interviews with 40 participants in the YDS. This qualitative research project provides an added dimension by analyzing the subjective experiences today's youth have had in making occupational choices. Findings from this study will provide new information for educators, policymakers and parents about what issues should be considered in helping youth develop their career paths.

Background

Adolescence is a crucial period for contemporary human development, involving exploration and new pathways that often influence youth's long-term careers. While exploring potential interests, youth are also developing and determining their capabilities. Determining how to better prepare today's youth for the workforce is of primary concern to employers, educators, policymakers, parents and youth themselves. The YDS is assessing how early employment affects young people's vocational trajectories. Since youth begin to exhibit occupational interests in their early teens, high school work experiences can provide an opportunity to explore those interests and improve the skills young people will need in the working world. In addition, we are considering how employment contributes to the broader psychological and social development of adolescents as well as their future socioeconomic attainments.

Discovering the consequences of work for young people is a challenging endeavor. Prior research on the impacts of work on high school youth has resulted in an array of contradictory findings and much controversy. Some argue that employment is beneficial, others see it as detrimental. Let us first examine the two opposing perspectives.

According to the first model, employment provides an environment that fosters vocational, psychological and social development. Part-time work allows students to acquire new skills, learn how to manage their time and money, and improve familial relationships. Self-reports of students and parents have identified work as a positive character-building experience, improving social skills, time management, responsibility and occupational knowledge. In addition, some research has shown that employment decreases school drop out rates and increases future earnings.

The second view is that work is detrimental Ñ having negative impacts, lessening school engagement, increasing problem behavior, and threatening mental health. From this perspective, work is seen as exposing students to increased physical risks, from dangerous machinery to noxious environments. Some students may have inadequate coping skills when confronted with the responsibility of being newly employed; this experience can increase stress and possibly depressed moods. Working is associated with increases in delinquent behavior Ñ both alcohol and illicit drug use. From this perspective, working draws students away from school and promotes behaviors that interfere with learning.

In spite of these possible drawbacks of employment, the fact remains that many high school students do work and there is no reason to doubt that this trend will continue. The question then becomes this: What can be done to make the experience beneficial, in both the long and short term? What can be done to assure that students get the most benefit from their work experiences? How can work complement and improve students' education, contribute to their psychological and social development, and positively impact their future occupational choices and earnings?

Youth Development Study

YDS data indicate that neither perspective Ñ"work is good" or "work is bad" Ñ is entirely correct. Instead, the consequences of work depend on a number of factors, including the quality of work, the pattern of investment in work, and the context in which it occurs. Taking these contingencies into account provides insight into the ways in which work may enhance or impair a student's well-being. By collecting detailed information on their employment, YDS investigators have been able to compare the many contingent factors that determine the impact of youth work experience.

The YDS has revealed much about the jobs youth engage in while in school. At this time the sexual division of labor begins. While a large portion of the ninth graders worked in the informal sector, such as babysitting for girls and yard work for boys, by the tenth grade most had shifted to the formal sector, primarily fast-food restaurants. Many girls transitioned out of restaurant work in the eleventh grade with boys following the same trend in the twelfth grade. While restaurant work remained a job for many, both girls and boys moved into a variety of other jobs; for example, some girls went into sales or clerical work and some boys got jobs as laborers.

By the twelfth grade, youth had a wide range of employment positions and experiences. The pattern of employment through high school showed that youth increasingly acquire more complex and responsible jobs, having greater training opportunities. As teenagers go through their early work "career," their jobs change in accordance with their increasing with experience and maturity. Although the complexity of work with data and people was fairly low throughout the four years of high school, it progressively increased for both girls and boys. Girls spent more time than boys reading and writing after the ninth grade. In general, girls spent more time working with people and boys spent more time working with things. Between the ninth and eleventh grades both boys and girls received more training from their employers. Adolescents, especially boys, were also increasingly likely over time to report that they supervised others.

Besides finding out how these youth were employed, YDS investigators were able to analyze the consequences of working for these youth, including impacts on their education, their behavior, and their psychological well-being. Analysis of YDS data shows that neither the intensity (hours) of work, nor the pattern of employment during high school had any pervasive positive or negative impact on adolescent mental health. Surprisingly, work hours had no consistent effect on homework time or academic achievement while in high school.

However, boys who worked at high intensity (20 or more hours per week) during high school pursued less education during two of four years after high school. Still, the YDS found that consistent, moderate employment was related to subsequent educational achievement. Boys who worked consistently throughout high school but limited their work time to twenty hours or less per week were more successful in pursuing post-secondary education. Management of school and work successfully during high school provided a favorable connection thereafter, especially for boys.

YDS also revealed that boys and girls who worked for long periods during high school were more likely to pursue part-time employment after high school. Part-time employment is linked to, and supports, post-secondary attainment. In addition, many youth were working in jobs after high school with one or more of the same employers they had during high school. Evidence from the YDS showed that those students who continuously worked more than 20 hours per week in high school entered full-time employment the most quickly. Boys in this category had the highest earnings four years after high school. Thus, the YDS finds two trajectories Ñ the first from moderate but consistent work during high school to more extensive higher education; and the second from more intensive high school work to earlier full-time employment and earnings attainment. (By six years after high school, youths' earnings in both groups are just about the same.)

Research on how work affects adolescent behavior strongly links intensive paid work to the use of alcohol, cigarettes, and illegal drugs. In the YDS, those students who worked most intensively did engage in more alcohol use than their counterparts throughout high school. Yet high school employment did not predict alcohol consumption four years after high school. Youth who are more heavily involved in their jobs may "grow up" faster and thus engage in more adult-like ways of spending their leisure time.

How does working affect students' values and abilities? YDS parents, reflecting on their own work experience, felt that work enabled them to develop self-confidence and resilience, improved their ability to manage both their money and time, and strengthened their interpersonal skills. The youth themselves were also fairly positive about their experiences, although their evaluations were clearly linked to the quality of their work. A sense of competence and achievement increased with positive work experiences, including opportunities for advancement and satisfaction with wages. Opportunities to learn skills on the job that are perceived by the youth as useful in the future enhanced both intrinsic and extrinsic work values. As a result, youth who had such learning opportunities came to see work as offering a chance to develop their interests and abilities as well as providing a paycheck and income security. At the same time, if jobs were stressful, students were more likely to report depressed moods. The YDS clearly revealed that the psychosocial outcomes of working depend on the quality of the job, rather than employment status or the hours worked.

It should also be noted that minorities were less likely to work while in high school. This discrepancy in employment rates foreshadows the barriers to the labor market many minority students face once they leave school and suggests the need to develop methods to assist minority youth who wish to be employed. Efforts should be made to assist all students in attaining quality jobs that are challenging, build their skills, and develop their career interests. The potentially detrimental consequences of highly intensive high school work experiences, however, should also be more widely recognized.

YDS Qualitative Supplement

Since the study started when the recipients were in ninth grade, YDS participants are now in their mid-twenties. In the last two years, questions related to the "subjective transition" to adulthood have been included in the annual survey, administered by mail. These new survey questions address goal formation and action strategies as young people move toward adult occupational roles. However, such questionnaire responses do not provide an in-depth understanding of youths' attitudes, feelings, and involvement in decision-making. Survey questions do not reveal much about youths' levels of engagement in decision-making, the stresses and difficulties that they experience, or the extent to which youth subjectively link their achievements, failures and shifts in direction to prior experiences. The current qualitative project was conceived to address these gaps in the YDS data. The current project is based on 40 intensive, open-ended interviews.

Participants' own perceptions of their occupational choices serve as the focus for the interviews. The interviews address issues of identity, timing and the level of cognitive and emotional engagement in key decision areas. They also elicit feelings of accomplishment and disappointment, seeking to understand how the youth themselves attribute success, blockage, or failure in the occupational realm to key experiences, including early work experiences. The extent to which youth perceive difficulties or obstacles in their decision-making, or in their progression toward their goals, is of particular interest. The interviews are open-ended and allow subjects to discuss factors they consider salient. The basic research questions are: What do young people perceive as factors contributing to, or restricting them from, achieving their career goals? Have they maintained the same career goals since high school? If so, why? If not, why not?

These interviews, now in progress, will provide much needed information on factors youth identify as assisting or obstructing their career choices and decisions. While much has already been learned from the ongoing YDS longitudinal study concerning the benefits that work provides today's students, the current study will provide more insight into what types of employment and how much work is most beneficial.

Early Findings

A critical factor in building resilient communities is assuring that citizens have the needed skills and opportunities to make occupational decisions that support economic as well as individual develop- ment. Recent research suggests that youth of today are having difficulties in clarifying their choices and deciding on careers. The St. Paul Youths' Transition from School to Work Project is beginning to provide a clearer understanding of what difficulties Minnesota youth are facing, and what factors might assist in improving their opportunities.

In identifying key problems that youth experience as they move toward adult work roles, the study will inform the work of many organizations and agencies that serve the needs of youth. Results of this study will be of interest to a broad range of policymakers. While the interviews are still being conducted, several preliminary findings with policy implications have emerged.

First, contrary to much concern expressed in the media and by some experts, there is little evidence from our study thus far that the transition from school to work is uniformly stressful. Whereas some youth feel overwhelmed by the many possibilities open to them, and "flounder" from job to job, most youth appear to traverse the bridge from school to work without major strain. Even among those study participants whose early careers reflect indecision, very few of the young adults express overt distress. This lack of stress could be attributed to the health of the economy. Even youth who are uncertain about the occupation that they would someday like to have nevertheless have little difficulty finding a job. One young man, when reminded that he had worked for five different firms in the period of several years, laughed and explained that the experience had been in no way stressful, "that's life," he said. Thus, a major factor in the alleviation of the stresses felt during the transition from school to work could be the health of the economy.

Second, despite the lack of pervasive psychological distress, some youth have difficulty balancing work and their social lives. Some youth appear to be more focused on socializing and establishing relationships, instead of emphasizing their work and career goals. Others run the risk of not having meaningful intimate relationships as they make the transition into work. Several of the young adults deliberately postponed marriage because of work and a few also felt that extensive obligations at work, seen as necessary to succeed, prevented them from forming fulfilling friendships and intimate relationships, and maintaining them over time. Although social scientists have long appreciated the potential for stressful links between work and the family, the possibility that early work experiences might interfere with family formation and other intimate relationships has not been addressed. Policies directed at alleviating family stresses associated with the workplace might be extended to encompass stresses experienced by single people because of work or extensive obligations at school.

Third, the interviewees noted the benefits of early jobs, held during high school, in helping them to think through the kinds of experiences they wanted to have in their future work. Several mentioned character development through work Ñovercoming shyness in dealing with adults, being more assertive and developing a greater sense of independence. Some of the young people had work experience during high school that enabled them to observe and to practice work activities that they wanted to learn more about.

Finally, some policies that are currently in place may need to be strengthened and modified, particularly with respect to vocational counseling. Few interview participants spoke of having guidance in finding career paths that were appealing and those that did appear to be more vocationally stable today. More commonly, our interviews reveal that some youth had little interaction with guidance counselors or teachers and were sometimes discouraged from pursuing further education, beyond high school. In addition, although opportunities to learn about specific vocational choices and educational opportunities are present in high schools, few of the interviewees found these resources to be helpful. One young man reported that guidance counselors devote most of their resources to the highly accomplished students; he had never discussed his future with anyone at the school except informally, on a few occasions, with a baseball coach. Several respondents reported going to the library on their own initiative to learn more about their occupational prospects. Several interviewees reported trying a series of jobs, college majors, or even schools because they had little idea what the actual experiences would involve. As mentioned, these forms of educational and occupational "turbulence" are not necessarily experienced as stressful. They do, however, detract from the efficient use of resources in educating people and also from the efficient allocation of workers to jobs.

Our findings to date suggest several ways that this problem can be addressed. It seems critical that school personnel not give up on youth who are performing badly in school. In addition, attempts should be made to help students find career paths that are appealing, even if a particular job is not their " dream job." More systematic efforts are needed to provide vocational information to youth in high schools. This could involve the Internet (which one interviewee used to select his line of work). Also, systematic and pervasive efforts should be made to provide students with actual experiences with the schools and occupations that they express interest in. The "trial and error" nature of selecting post secondary educational experiences and jobs is a reality for many students. The process of vocational exploration should begin during high school, when early experiences can be reflected upon and influence later choices. Less desirably, it can begin to take place only after graduation from high school or even college. For youth who lack vocational direction, shifting schools and jobs can entail substantial economic, personal, and social costs.

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