ABSTRACT
Youth employment in the United States is not a recent phenomenon. Prior to 1925, the majority of adolescents entered the labour force before the age of 15 as full-time workers. With the introduction of compulsory secondary education, full-time employment among high-school age youth dramatically declined; adolescents remained full-time students at least until the age of 16. However, in the United States between 1940 and 1980, adolescents increasingly combined school with work. The growth of the service industry greatly enhanced part-time employment opportunities and changed the nature of work in adolescence. Part-time employment among youth in the United States is now a normative context of development. By the late 1980s, approximately 70 per cent of adolescents aged 16-18 were employed during the school year (Manning 1990; more recent studies confirm the prevalence of this experience in adolescence, Carr 1996).
