To determine whether there has been a secular rise in job instability among young adults over the past 3 decades, a study compared two National Longitudinal Survey cohorts of young white men. The first cohort entered the labor market in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the second during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The study examined…

Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth were analyzed to identify patterns in the early labor market and employment experience of a sample of 12,781 U.S. youths who were first interviewed in 1979 (at ages 14 through 21) and last interviewed in 1990 (at ages 25 through 32 years). School-to-work transition patterns were classified by…

The long-term effects of employment during high school were analyzed by using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data on 1,067 students who were initially interviewed in 1979 and who remained in the survey sample through 1991. Hours worked by respondents during the week prior to the survey date in their sophomore, junior, and senior years of…