School students and part-time work.

Lyn Robinson, ACER

Longitudinal surveys of Australian youth research report ; n.2

Abstract

This report is about student-workers. The youthful part-time workers encountered in supermarket delicatessens, hot bread shops and fast food stores throughout Australia in the 1990s are very likely to also be full-time secondary school students. Over the past two to three decades, the increasing number of students who combine study at school with part-time employment outside of school hours has been widely observed, although estimates of how many school students have jobs vary greatly. Furthermore, while the trend has been well recognised, its implications have frequently been overlooked. Consideration of the student-worker phenomenon gives rise to a number of questions about the incidence, nature and potential effects of part-time work among teenage school students - issues that should be of concern to students, their parents, educators (both policy makers and practitioners) and the wider community. The first of those issues - the incidence of students who have part-time jobs during the school year - is addressed in this report.