March 10, 2005 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Education and duration of employment relationships
Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLS79) show that individuals with a high school diploma or higher were more likely to have had an employment relationship lasting at least 5 years
by age 30 or 35 than were high school dropouts.
[Chart data—TXT]
Even though high school dropouts left school the earliest, were in the labor market for the longest time—and therefore had the most time to start down a career path—they were the least likely to have had lengthy employment relationships. Only 36 percent of high school dropouts had held a job for 5 years or more by age 35.
In contrast, those with at least some college or a bachelor’s degree made the transition to lengthier employment relationships the fastest. By age 35, 66 percent of those with some college and 63 percent of those with a college degree had held a job for 5 years.
These data are from the BLS National Longitudinal Surveys program. For additional information, see
"The transition from school to work: education and work
experiences," by Julie A. Yates, Monthly Labor Review, February 2005.
Related TED article:
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
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Read more »