Analysis: Children and young people with part-time jobs get better grades

Primary school students with part-time jobs get, on average, 0.26 points higher grades in the final exam in mathematics and Danish in the 9th grade than children and young people without part-time jobs.

This is shown by a new analysis carried out by Kraka Advisory for Danske Bank. The analysis was prepared on the basis of microdata from Statistics Denmark in the period from 2012-2020 and is limited to children and young people between the ages of 13 and 17.

There can be many good reasons to get a part-time job while going to school. It can be a way to earn your own money, to get a taste of adult life and the labor market – and apparently it can also result in higher grades at school.

One of the explanations for the difference in grades may be that children and young people with leisure jobs gain skills that also help them at school.

Research shows that experiences with money from an early age contribute to creating good money habits later in life. Danske Bank has also previously investigated what affects children and young people’s financial responsibility, and here the result showed that children and young people with leisure jobs score higher than those without.

-Practice makes perfect, and the same applies with money. When you have earned your own money from an early age by stocking up on goods in the supermarket or buying newspapers, you also become more financially aware in the long term. In this way, leisure jobs are crucial when children and young people have to learn good money habits, says Anne Juel Jørgensen, head of children and young people at Danske Bank.

Research has also previously indicated that children and young people with part-time jobs have a lower tendency to be absent from school and involved in crime, and that they are more likely to be enrolled in higher education.

Too much work drags grades down

In general, primary school students’ Danish and mathematics grades in the 9th grade final exam have been steadily increasing from 2012 to 2020. During the period, they have increased by 0.75 percentage points. Pupils with part-time jobs get higher grades in all years than pupils who have not had a part-time job.

The analysis also sheds light on how much time children and young people spend on their leisure jobs, and how the amount of work affects the grade point average. The majority of 13-17-year-olds work less than four hours a week on average, and this has been the case throughout the period from 2012-2020.

An important observation, however, is that elementary school students who work more than four hours a week actually drag down their grade point average, and the more hours they work, the more their grades drop on average.

More children and young people with jobs outside the biggest cities

Around 30 percent of Danish children and young people were in employment in 2020, and that number has been relatively stable since 2012. Almost the same number of girls and boys have a part-time job, but the girls work slightly more than the boys.

However, there are big differences when it comes to geography. It is especially children and young people outside the country’s largest cities who spend afternoons, evenings and weekends working.

In Greater Copenhagen, Århus, Odense and Aalborg, far fewer children and young people have a part-time job than in, for example, West Jutland. In Varde and Ringkøbing-Skjern Municipality, more than 40 percent of young people are employed, which is about twice as much as in Frederiksberg and Gentofte Municipality.

-The results of this analysis speak for themselves. When you look at the value of leisure jobs, we parents should do what we can to support our children and young people getting a leisure job, regardless of where in the country we live, says Anne Juel Jørgensen.