Search Results

This research report analyses how young Australians are managing their transition from education to work. It is based on data from the Life Patterns project, a two-decade longitudinal research program of the Youth Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. This report focuses on the experiences of cohort two, the generation that left secondary school in 2006 (as also referred to as Generation Y) in order to map their integration to the labour market.

The analysis explores what Furlong (2007:102) describes as ‘the grey area between employment and unemployment’ to understand the nature and quality of young adults’ working conditions. [The authors] agree with Furlong that simplistic binaries constructed around the distinction between employed and unemployed no longer provide an accurate picture of the contemporary landscape of the labour market for youth. The report also draws on the experiences of cohort one, who left school in 1991 (corresponding to Generation X). The report offers some inter-generational comparisons as a way of analysing issues of continuity and change in education and work in the last quarter of a century.

Excerpt from publication. Show less