When I wrote the article College Enrollment versus Labor Force Participation for Age 18 to 24 I found some overlap between the percent of the population that is enrolled in college and the percent that is in the labor force. It seemed obvious that was due to some people doing both. But how many college students actually do work?
A commenter, Middle Molly, pointed me to the answer at the BLS table :
Employment Status of 16-24 year olds by school enrollment and educational attainment.
It shows the break down of students versus labor force status. Its only a snapshot for April 2013 and I don't see historical info.
Here is how the full time student population looks :
I'm actually a bit surprised that more students don't work. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. If I think back to my college days there were quite a few students that did not work at all. Part time jobs were pretty common but it was just as common to not work at all. Very few people work full time will enrolled in college full time and I'm not surprised by that.
This is for April and I'd expect that if you took the snapshot in July that you'd see higher percent working. Though I'm not sure if they count students on summer break as enrolled or not, I'd assume so.
About 85% of students are full time and 15% are just part time. I'd be surprised if the part timers didn't work more and I wasn't let down. Here's how it looks for part time students :
Very few part time students aren't in the labor force.
--