The phrase "secondary employment" has been familiar to the majority of Russians since back in the Soviet era, and can reasonably be viewed as part of a broader process of adaptation to new economic conditions since the end of the late 1980s. With young people, however, this approach to the phenomenon of secondary employment is not entirely correct. A large proportion of young people were born and have become socialized during the era of the market economy, making it necessary to review the term "adaptation." Secondary employment among young people can be studied as one process of their socialization. Given that young people are not qualified and experienced workers, a key motive for them (especially adolescents) to be engaged in secondary employment is to provide material support for their interests or support for their families. Young people who are working on the side are not usually thinking about acquiring work skills. Nevertheless, regardless of its purpose, having a supplementary job helps people to acquire professional and communicative skills. Thus, one of the objectives of our study was to determine any effect of supplementary employment on the formation of good-quality labor resources that meet market requirements. What we mean by such resources are young people with high aspirations who view work as a way to realize their creative potential and as a source of income to achieve their goals. Here, the authors report the results of a study of secondary work habits among the youth of Samara Oblast, providing an analysis of social and demographic factors that determine young people's employment patterns. They conclude that (1) young people's active involvement in the market of secondary employment is affected by objective macroeconomic conditions and their inner sense of the necessity of earning money, which is a reflection of their desire to have a certain standard of living; (2) it is reasonable to say that there is a certain dissonance between the characteristics of desired work and actual jobs; and (3) today's market in young people's secondary employment does not influence the shaping of labor resources that meet market needs, nor does experience in working part-time shape high career aspirations among adolescents. (Contains 5 tables, 11 figures and 12 notes.)