This paper will explore whether this tenure differential has persisted after a decade in which the commitment of women to the paid workforce increased substantially. To answer this question, I began by examining the first full-time job for "recent school leavers" from the National Longitudinal Studies youth cohort over the four year period from 1979-1982.2 Tables 1 and 2 present summary statistics for the resulting male and female samples, in which full-time jobs are defined as having a usual workweek of 20 or more hours. The number of male and female workers included in the sample are quite close: 2305 men and 2342 women. The mean father’s education proved to be higher for women than for men -- 11.11 vs. 11.00 years -- as was the mean years of education for the young workers themselves -- 12.21 vs. 11.67. As I discuss in greater detail below, at least some of this sex-based difference in the workers' mean education at the time of the first full-time job reflects the tendency of men to enter the labor force relatively more frequently while still in high school. Thus, 46.6% of the men and 32.6% of the women that are included in the first job 20 hour sample have not yet completed high school. Moreover, the average age at the beginning of the total sample of first jobs is 18.9 for men and 19.1 for women. As I had done in the 1968-1971 period, I also created a sample in which I selected the first job that was at least 30 hours per week. The summary statistics for the male and female "30 hour ll samples are presented in Tables 3 and 4. Relatively more women than men never held a 30 hour job during the sample period, as evidenced by the greater decline in the size of the female sample from that obtained with the 20 hour definition of full-time employment: for men, the sample size declined from 2305 to 2217, and for women, from 2342 to 2154. As one would expect, this 30 hour sample is somewhat older -- mean age rises to 19.0 for the men and 19.2 for the women -- and more educated the mean years of education are 11.75 for men and 12.32 for women. Moreover, the proportion of first-job holders with less than a high school education drops to 42.3% of the men and 27.2% of the women. Overall, since the overlap in the two samples is great, the mean figures in the 30 hour sample do not change dramatically.