First Jobs: Young People’s Reflections on Early Paid Employment in Canada

About the project

Often when we think about children working, we are concerned about children labouring in sweatshops in the Global South under abhorrent working conditions. Yet many children work across the world, including Canada. While young workers face safety and other challenges with work, including inconsistent labour legislation across provinces and unenforced rules governing young people’s earliest work, many value having jobs and see early work as an opportunity. When is early work beneficial? When it is harmful? How should it be monitored?

North American research into young workers tends to draw mostly on surveys, to focus on older youth, and to concentrate on effects on safety, delinquency and education. Rarely do researchers directly ask younger people about their views of early work. Our research changed this pattern by talking to teenagers about early work. Our study was built on a successful pilot project investigating younger people’s ideas about, and experiences with, early part-time employment. Young workers in our pilot study generally saw their work positively building skills and providing a competitive edge, but we also noticed a tension between independence and dependence, and saw a vulnerability to risk.

In our larger study, we talked to young teens from a wider range of backgrounds and work experiences, and asked:

  • How young people, aged 12 to 16 (working and not working) think about themselves and their peers working (including perceived benefits and/or disadvantages)?
  • What are their experiences (if any) of early paid work, and how have these experiences changed over time?
  • How might differences in age, class, race and gender link to ideas about, access to, and experiences of, early paid work?
  • How do ideas about and experiences of work differ based on where you live?

Principal Investigators

Rebecca Raby, CHYS, Brock University
Wolfgang Lehmann, University of Western Ontario

RESEARCH ASSISTANTS

Lindsay Sheppard (York Univeristy, Sociology PhD, now graduated), Melody Minhorst (Brock University, PhD student) and Riley Easterbrook (Brock University, BA, now graduated)

Publications

To date, the pilot study for this larger project has led to seven publications:

Raby, R., L.C. Sheppard, and W. Lehmann. (2024) “‘It is intimidating going into your first job’: Young teens and workplace safety.” Children and Society.

Sheppard, L. & Raby, R. (2023) Off track or on point? Side comments in focus groups with teens. Qualitative Research, 0(0).

Raby, R. (2022). Amid a red-hot summer job market, teenaged workers need to keep health and safety in mind. The Conversation, June 26, 2022.

Easterbrook, R., Raby, R., & Lehmann, W. (2021). Navigating babysitting as liminal, gendered, and undervalued work. Childhood, 28(1), 103-117.

Sheppard, L.C., Raby, R. & Lehmann, W. (2019). Grill guys and drive-thru girls: Discourses of gender in young people’s part-time work. Journal of Childhood Studies, 44(3): 56-69.

Raby, R., Lehmann, W., Helleiner, J. & Easterbrook, R. (2018). Reflections on using participant-generated, digital photo-elicitation in research with young Canadians about their first part-time jobs. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 17(1).

Raby, R., Lehmann, W., Helleiner, J. & Easterbrook, R. (2018) “I’ll be more prepared than most people”: Young people talking about their first jobs. Childhood 25(2), 237-252.