Information from the Longitudinal Survey of Australian Youth and follows them for 10 years from the mid-teens until their mid-20s.
What are they doing?
Not surprisingly, most (81%) are still at school, and 30% of those in year 11 or 12 are doing at least some VET.
60% have a job while at school, mainly working in sales (31%) or as labourers – fast food cooks, kitchen hands, shelf fillers, farm workers or cleaners (28%). Some others (25%) work community and personal service roles such as waiters, sports coaches, bar attendants, baristas or child carers.
About 8% do ‘gig work’: “where workers don’t have set hours, and they get paid per task or assignment rather than receiving an hourly or weekly wage.” Typically, this means they babysit, do landscaping and gardening work, cleaning, umpiring or coaching or perform online tasks.
Almost all live with their parents, family members or a guardian (96%), but 3% are homeless or in unstable housing. This “included staying with relatives or at a friend’s house, staying in a caravan, a boarding house or a hostel, or sleeping rough: that is in a car, tent, or on the street.”
This latest infographic tells us a bit about the latest group who reached 17 in 2017.
The subject choices are gender skewed
And I guess this skewing should not surprise us. It is also in expected directions, but maybe this really needs looking at. For example, 85% of males studied maths, while only 74% of girls did. Boys also dominated tech studies (21 vs 13%) and IT systems (14 vs 3%).
On the other hand, more girls than boys studied humanities (56 vs 44%), arts (38 vs 29%) and taking a language other than English (10 vs 5%).
So, what about the ‘soft skills’?
The infographic points out that:
“While some technical skills are becoming obsolete in a changing job market impacted by automation and innovation, soft skills are increasingly required of employees,” so
“A teenager today will likely have 17 different employers and five different careers in their lifetime and will require a set of transferable skills that can be used across a range of jobs.”
What are the Gen Z’s perceptions about the importance of such skills?
Well, 83% agreed that they stayed on task when working in teams, 81% agreed they are good at coming up with new ideas, 74% agreed that they see problems as challenges to overcome while 67% agree they have good oral communication skills and are agree they are good at coming up with new ideas, so are good at presenting a talk to a group of acquaintances.
And VDC News has looked at young people in the past
Just to refresh readers’ memories, take a look at the articles earlier this year on the Skillsroad survey on youth experiences and the education and training that young people are doing. In an article in October 2018, we highlighted the need to make the right career choices by busting some of the myths around VET. Take a look at these again.