In-school labour force status and post-school wage rates of young men

This empirical study includes four models of early post-school wage determinants of white and black young men in the National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) Panel in the 1966 to 1971 period. Within each model, the focus is on in-school labour force status as a determinant of post-school wage rates. As such, the results are related to the joint employment and schooling legislative goals expressed in Title IV of the 1978 Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) reauthorization as a way to mitigate school to work transition problems of youth. The major result, found with ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression techniques, is as follows: in-school job holding, significantly and positively increases post-school wage rates relative to the youth who neither worked nor looked for work as a student (Model 1). For a white youth, this basic conclusion is similar even when the white sample is divided into poor and non-poor youths (Model 4) and by education level (Model 2). For a black youth, in-school job holding operates on post-school wage rates mainly by enabling a job to be found (Model 3). A main policy interest, however, may be in the results for a poor youth who held part-time in-school jobs (Model 4). Other things being equal, such a youth had post-school wage rates that were 35 cents above the wages of previously NLF students and the result was highly significant statistically.