Part-Time Work of High School Students: Impact on Employability, Employment Outcomes and Career Development (Report‪)‬

This paper examines what is a relatively small literature on the relationships between the paid part-time work of high school students, their employability, employment outcomes and career development. The relevance of these relationships is linked to a broad transition from school to work agenda and a relatively new focus on the transition of work-bound young people (Juntunen & Wettersten, 2005; Mortimer & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2007). This focus is particularly important as United States and Australian studies with large national longitudinal data sets have demonstrated that students combining part-time work and school have an increased chance of being in full-time work upon school completion (Vickers, Lamb & Hinkley, 2003) and into early adulthood (Carr, Wright & Brody, 1996). Researchers have also found that part-time work contributes to the vocational development of young people (Beavis, Curtis & Curtis, 2005) and assists in the development of employability skills (Smith & Comyn, 2003). Data have shown that increasing numbers of adolescents participate in paid part-time work while at school. The United States Youth Development Study (Mortimer & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2007) showed that only 7% of students in their study were not involved in paid part-time work. It should be noted that the sample in this study was a group of 1010 young people in one US state followed for four years of high school from 1987 to 1991. While the numbers are not this high in Australia, a significant number of school students are employed in part-time work. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed that the percentage of school students aged 15-19 engaging in part-time work increased from 26% in 1990 to 34% in 2000, and then to 79% in 2004 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1990, 2000, 2004). Smith and Green (2005) gathered retrospective data from school-based new apprentices, and reported that 58.9% of this sample had part-time jobs in addition to their school-based apprenticeship during their school years. Unpublished data gathered by Smith and Patton (2008) in 2006 from 680 Year 10 students in five schools, city and rural, across two states in Australia, showed that 47% were working for an employer. When these students were in Year 12 in 2008, this figure was 64%.