How hard is it to enter the job market?

Andrey Kamenov, Ph.D. Probability and Statistics

An interesting aspect of studying employment is people entering the job market. At what age do people most commonly enter the market? What factors influence the time a person spends looking for a first job?

First, let’s focus on the percentage of people looking for their first job that successfully enter the workforce within 12 months. In total, the success rate is 32-33 percent. At the same time, 40 percent of men and 45 percent of women stopped looking for a job after one year (for different reasons – some of them were probably looking for temporary employment only). The others (25 percent of men and 19 percent of women) are still unemployed.

Here are the detailed statistics for the recent years.

Percentage of new entrants finding a job within one year

As you can see, there is no clear disparity between the rates for men and women. Contingency tests also report no statistically significant difference.

A note on the methodology: we use successive CPS March Supplement data files, trying to match both household and person records between them.

One thing to keep in mind is that we are slightly underestimating these rates. First, we cannot track people who got a job and moved to a different household within a year. Second, persons who were employed at some time during the year but lost their job and are currently unemployed are not counted as having entered the job market successfully.

Let’s also look at how the rate varied depending on the person’s education.

Of course, entering the job market is much easier for people who have a degree. It also shouldn’t come as a surprise that the same task is much more difficult for non-high school graduates.

An interesting finding, however, is the fact that those who are still in high school are more likely to find a job than college students. We can only assume the reasons behind this. It is probably harder to work part-time in college (and even more so with full-time jobs) – and the expenses are higher at the same time.

As we know, the American workforce is aging, along with the population as a whole. However, does this have any effect on the age people start looking for their first job?

Average age of Americans entering the job market

Two things are immediately noticeable from the chart above. First, women enter the workforce around two years later than men on average. Second, while the age has changed only slightly for women since 2000, the increase is much more prominent for men: over one full year.

Source(s):

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About Andrey Kamenov

Andrey Kamenov, Ph.D. Probability and Statistics

Andrey Kamenov is a data scientist working for Advameg Inc. His background includes teaching statistics, stochastic processes and financial mathematics in Moscow State University and working for a hedge fund. His academic interests range from statistical data analysis to optimal stopping theory. Andrey also enjoys his hobbies of photography, reading and powerlifting.

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