This book examines the value Korean employers and workers place on stable employment with a focus on the workers' want for more desirable transition outcomes as modified by various individual and structural factors, particularly labor market structure. Results of the analysis show that internal labor market structure has increased employment stability and the desirability of transition outcomes in Korea over time. Korea's industrialization has enabled internal labor market structure to mature to a level that has increased employment stability and the desirability of transition outcomes. This implies that Korea has experienced industrialization in such a short period that internal labor market structure has not matured enough to influence the ways in which other factors affect employment transition patterns. Results of the effects of labor market structure and other factors on employment transition patterns imply that Korea's industrialization has had mixed effects on workers' economic and social well-being. On the one hand, it has improved the overall level of workers' well being, yet on the other hand, it has increased heterogeneity in well being among different types of workers.

This book examines the work experiences of twenty-five young men and women in their first jobs following high school. The case studies profiled here describe in detail the process of young workers becoming established in our society. The workplaces in which Kathryn M. Borman and her colleagues spent full shifts once a month for over a year were the locales for young workers' first "real" jobs--jobs they held for more than six months and viewed as a means of entree to adult responsibilities. This study is one of the first to provide an intimate picture of the daily work lives of young factory workers, bank clerks, health spa employees and others who hold jobs in the youth labor market. How jobs provide opportunities for some and hold little hope for advancement for most is vividly described. How employers can improve working conditions for their young employees--especially young women--is clearly apparent in this analysis of the workplace as a "democratic community." Sociologists and others in the fields of education, labor market economics, women's studies, and the anthropology of work will find this volume important reading.