WASHINGTON (AP) — The Labor Department says young adults held an average of just over six jobs each from ages 18 through 26.
Since 1997, the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics has been keeping tabs on about 9,000 young men and women born in the early 1980s, surveying their educational and workplace progress. The new survey is from interviews in 2011-2012.
According to the survey, more than two-thirds of the jobs held by high-school dropouts lasted less than a year.
Women in the group were more likely than men to have received a bachelor’s degree, 32 percent of women to 24 percent of the men.
Meanwhile, a separate study by the New America Foundation think tank shows typical graduate student debt is $58,000 and growing at 8 percent a year.