Young worker occupational surveillance in the United States: Opportunities and challenges

Background: Young workers (≤24 years) are a large relatively unstudied population in the US. Most research focuses primarily on acute injuries, with limited research suggesting that employment as a youth may yield other benefits and risks in the long-term. Utilizing existing nationally-representative data, we examined multiple aspects of young worker health and future impacts of youth employment. Methods: Using data from the National Health Interview Survey, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we have used analytic approaches ranging from descriptive statistics to advanced modeling techniques, including Structural Equation Modeling (www.umiamiorg.com). Young workers were examined by age, occupational and industry sector groupings and a range of health and psychosocial outcomes. Results: A series of manuscripts and a monograph on young workers have been produced based on these publicly-available data. We highlight relevant findings and the challenges of utilizing these data. Opportunities for linkages with the National Death Index and O*Net to create enriched datasets to look at mortality and occupational exposures are explored. Conclusions: There are many available datasets that can be used to study young worker health. However, each source comes with important limitations. In particular, most data sources are based on general purpose surveys that lack detailed information on work environment and occupation-specific exposures. Possible designs for a targeted nationally-representative study of young workers are proposed.