School, jobs stress teens
Students putting long hours into paid, unpaid work
The Province
Published: Monday, September 24, 2007

Teens are getting a bad rap for the hard work they actually do.
Autumn means the time of year when legions of young people head back to school and their part-time jobs, Statistics Canada noted in a publication marking the first day of fall yesterday.
"Despite the stereotypical image of nonchalant, lounging teenagers, many teens carry a heavier load than people give them credit for," said the StatsCan study.
"In fact, compared with nine other countries . . . from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Canadian teens ranked first in terms of average hours spent on unpaid and paid labour during the school week."
Canadian teens spent the biggest portion of their workday in school.
"After school attendance, homework was the most time-consuming unpaid activity for teens, with 60 per cent of them doing an average of two hours and 20 minutes of homework every day," said the StatsCan report.
They spent an average of 9.2 hours per school day on school work, homework, paid work and housework in 2005.
On weekends, the amount of time they spent on those labours was 3.5 hours a day in 2005.
"Not surprisingly, the relatively high workloads involved do result in some stress," said the report.
"For example, 16 per cent considered themselves workaholics, 39 per cent felt under constant pressure to accomplish more than they could handle and 64 per cent cut back on sleep to get things done.
"Also, only 45 per cent of teens with high stress reported being very happy and/or very satisfied with life, significantly lower than that of teens with little or no stress -- around 72 per cent."