Although most young people in their late teens live with their parents and are still in school, many are working and learning about the responsibilities and rewards of paid employment. Most employed teenagers work part-time in low paying jobs that require little formal education. Despite ongoing debate about the effects of employment during the school year, working a moderate number of hours while still in school appears to be beneficial to young people. For example, research shows that high-school graduates are much more likely than dropouts to have had a job at which they worked fewer than 20 hours per week while in school. Gender appears to have a role in the relationship between part-time work and performance in school. While male dropouts were more likely to have worked long hours (more than 20 hours per week), female dropouts were much more likely not to have had a job at all. What is surprising is the difference in teen employment rates across Canada. Young people in Western Canada and Ontario are more likely to be employed than are young people in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces with the exception of Prince Edward Island. In a recent survey, the percentage of teenagers with jobs ranged from 48% in Alberta to 19% in Newfoundland. Another characteristic of teen employment is that teenagers appear to be working longer hours. Working teens aged 16, for example, spent an average of 834 hours at their job in 1990, up from 440 hours in 1986. Among working teens aged 17–19, average annual hours increased to 1180 from 792 over the same period. In contrast, the working hours of older Canadians changed only slightly during the late 1980s, averaging 1648 in 1990. Teenagers have very different reasons for working part-time than do older Canadians. The reason given by 74% of employed teens for working part-time was that they were going to school. 41% of older Canadians said the reason they were working part-time was that they could not find full-time work. Nevertheless, many young people (19%) said they were working part time because it was the only type of employment they could find. Therefore, it appears that teens work part-time for a wide variety of reasons, and that for some at least such employment is beneficial. A number of students, however, drop out of school to work full-time lured by what at first seems to be a well-paid job. Such teens need to remember that they may very well find future employment prospects severely limited because of their lack of formal education.