The Employment Situation of Students in their Final Semester at FCyA-UNAM and the Family's Socioeconomic Level

It is commonly believed that students enter the job market to cover their family's economic needs, and such reasoning is often utilized to explain the interruption or deceleration of a student's planned course of study. However, few studies have been conducted on the topic in Mexico. An earlier study discovered that among first-semester students at UNAM'S school of accounting and administration (FCyA), the two factors primarily associated with student employment were gender and age; the schooling and occupation of both parents (taken as indicators of socioeconomic level) did not show any relationship with the students' working status. Therefore, a decision was made to compare the same variables with students in their final semester of school. The previous results were confirmed: the relative importance of socioeconomic variables had very low weight in explaining student employment. Various reasons are presented to explain the outcome and future lines of inquiry are suggested.