During the last decade there has been a heightened interest in teenage work experience as a partial solution to the problem of an increasingly visible delinquent youth culture. To examine the effect of teenage employment on drug use and other more serious delinquent behavior, students in grades 6-12, from a randomly selected national population, completed surveys in both 1981 and 1982 assessing their work experiences and the extent of their involvement during the last year in delinquent activities. An analysis of the results showed that of the students in the longitudinal sample, 34.3 percent reported regular employment in either 1981, 1982, or both years. The workers were distributed unevenly by race, gender, and grade level, with males, whites, and senior high school students being disproportionately represented in jobs. Female workers also came from more advantaged families than did female nonworkers. Workers and nonworkers differed on a number of dimensions before they commenced work, with female workers reporting more behavior involving interpersonal aggression and more than twice as much drug use as their nonworking female counterparts. Male workers reported lower levels of parental attachment than did male nonworkers, and workers of both genders reported significantly greater involvement in extracurricular activities than did nonworkers. In contrast to earlier reports, evidence from this study implies that teenage working does not increase delinquency and does not have a detrimental effect on commitment to education, involvement in extracurricular activities, time spent on homework, attachment to school, or attachment to parents. (Author/BL)