In fact, when asked in very general terms about whether the jobs they held in adolescence had any negative effects, only a small number had anything to report. Parents believe that the jobs that they themselves held during adolescence helped them to acquire these very same attributes.

Most parents like the idea of their children working, as they think that employment instills a whole array of positive traits, including independence, responsibility, interpersonal skills, and a good work ethic ( Phillips & Sandstrom, 1990). The prevalence of teenage employment has sparked lively debates over whether adolescents should work, for how many hours, and in what kinds of jobs.

Employment becomes more regular and more time-consuming during the latter years of high school, with many teens working 20 or more hours per week. By the age of 16, adolescent workers are more likely to have formal jobs, working in the retail and service sectors of the economy, especially in fast food restaurants, grocery stores, or other retail stores. At first, paid work is episodic and generally quite limited. Many youth start to work informally even earlier, at about the age of twelve, most often in their own neighborhoods, babysitting, shoveling snow, cutting grass, or doing various odd jobs. Having a paying job at some time during high school has become a near-universal adolescent experience ( Committee on the Health and Safety Implications of Child Labor, 1998 U.S. The article concludes with a discussion of what parents, counselors, and others can do to help children make sound employment-related decisions during adolescence so as to assure effective career exploration and a successful school-to-work transition.

Moreover, the YDS shows that patterns of teenage employment are linked to the social origins and motivations of youth upon entry to high school, and suggest that teenagers exercise agency as they build human capital during high school through education and work experience. The findings address this debate and support the final perspective-that the effects of teen employment on the successful transition to adulthood depend on its patterning through the years of high school (most invested, steady, sporadic, and occasional employment patterns) and its quality. This article summarizes findings from the Youth Development Study, a long-term, ongoing longitudinal study that has followed a community-based panel from middle adolescence through early adulthood. Much controversy surrounds the consequences of adolescent paid work, with researchers coming to diverse conclusions about whether work is good, work is bad, work doesn’t matter (the purported effects of employment are spurious, dependent on processes of selection), and work matters for some youth but not others, depending on their prior backgrounds and attributes and the contexts of their employment.

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