Varieties of Youth Employment: A Typology of Everyday Skill-Based Activities at Work

• In Event: 66.055 - Using National and International Data Sets to Explore Young Adult Outcomes

Abstract

According to practice engagement theory, everyday workplace tasks offer an opportunity for skill development among youth, yet prior research highlights the prevalence of routine and low-skill work within entry-level jobs. Utilizing data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), the following study demonstrates how workplace reading, writing, and numeracy-based activities differ among youth aged 16 to 24 in Canada. Latent class analysis provides a typology of skill-based activities at work and generates insight into how socio-demographic, employment, education, and skill-based factors are associated with each group. The findings highlight that youth employment cannot be uniformly characterized as low-skill. Rather, there are unique low and high skill youth employment groups with differing characteristics.

Authors

• Michelle Yue Chen, Paragon Testing Enterprises / The University of British Columbia

• Ashley Pullman, The University of British Columbia