This report examines the existing literature concerning how young people enter the labor market and specifies what important questions may be analyzed by existing but untapped data and what issues require further research. In reviewing the extent of current knowledge, its scope is found to be limited to three general areas: the role is known of background factors, ability, school performance, and the influence of teachers, family, and friends on the age (or grade level) at which young men make the transition from school to work; people are influenced by their personalities to aspire to certain types of occupations; and young people find jobs primarily through the assistance of acquaintances and relatives but prefer direct application without the intervention of a third party. Routes for further investigation are suggested as follow: (1) age/SES [socio-economic status]/race/education-specific distributions and transition rates for full- and part-time schooling and simultaneous employment; (2) longitudinal studies of preferences that include later actual job outcome characteristics to test the assumption that career aspiration helps to explain the allocation of different jobs; (3) data on recruitment methods used nationally by employers (i.e., data indicating age-specific preferences for employees and based on actual behavior); and (4) more elaborate study of the process of job search, emphasizing patterns of job seeking across occupational situses, heterogeneity of job search methods, and the relationships among duration, intensity, and methods of search. (Author/ELG)