Assessing school-to-work transitions in the United States

Abstract

The transition from school to work is very smooth for some youth and less smooth for others. This paper addresses several measurement issues related to the assessment of the school-to-work transition. To illustrate these issues, several existing findings from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are used.

There are several analytical issues addressed in assessing successful transitions: consideration between short-term and long-term transitions; defining when transitions actually occur; and the difficulty in creating a definition of a successful transition. Essential data include the number of weeks worked, the number of weeks unemployed, and observations of each job held. Several important distinctions appear in the different measures of success. One is whether success is defined as working steadily in the labor market or working steadily for a single employer. A second distinction is how long the job or employment spell must last to be considered “steady”. A third distinction is whether the job(s) must be full-time or part-time.

The data required to study adequately the transition into the labor force must be longitudinal and should begin with young people and should consist of individuals, not households, and collect information directly from the individuals. An event history approach should be utilized to provide the best measures of change and duration, maximizing the potential for evaluating different definitions and analytical methods.