For many young people, your first job is a rite of passage. It might be babysitting, or working at a fast food restaurant.

National statistics show the number of working teens is higher than it’s been in 14 years, according to the Washington Post, partially a result of an expansion of available jobs and more young people willing to work and make money. According to federal data, the labor force participation rate for the youngest American workers was 35.7% in August 2024.

The Class of 2025 is growing up, and making decisions about their futures. Students who work gain experience in the adult world, develop independence, and earn a paycheck while exploring potential careers. But sometimes a busy work schedule can be at odds with another key to the future: completing high school. However the growing array of school options — such as the proliferation of online programs — may be creating an opening to more easily work and graduate.

A few students in the Class of 2025 have started jobs. They worked over the summer, or for their parents or other family members. Some students, like Ali, juggle an afterschool job at the mall with school.

“I learned how to cashier and … I’m better with money now,” she said.

“[I] honestly really love the job and the community I’ve built there.”

Ali has to schedule her work hours around the David Douglas High School schedule. But three Class of 2025 students who attend school virtually have used that schooling option to more easily fit work into their schedule.

For Austin, a job means money to pursue your interests

Last December, Austin got a job at Subway.

“It was a completely new experience,” he said. “It’s not something you can really be ready for, not something you can prepare for.”

He didn’t start working at Subway because he wanted to be a sandwich artist. He wanted to build his own personal computer.

“I researched parts and had an amount I wanted to save up to,” he said.

“TikTok is an excellent teacher.”

Related: The COVID generation: Class of 2025 students on how the pandemic changed their school experience

Austin liked the people he worked with at Subway and said most of the customers were nice. But the job could be unpleasant at times. And once he accomplished his goal, he quit.

Building a computer was completely foreign to Austin’s mom Amber. But her son’s focus on pursuing what he wanted — that was very familiar.

“He’s a very goal-oriented kid,” said Amber. “He wanted this computer and he knew the only way he was going to get it was — he got a job and he saved his money and he budgeted it and he bought the things.”

Austin has attended school both online and in-person in the David Douglas School District. But midway through his junior year, he decided to move to the David Douglas Online Academy permanently. He says he likes that he can make his own schedule — with enough time for going to the gym and having a job.

When Austin first started high school, he was online and it was a rocky experience. As a junior, he said he was better about keeping to a schedule.

In the future, Austin says he wants to run a care home. It’s something he’s learned about by helping at the care home his sister operates. Now, he’s on the lookout for another job that might help him prepare for that.

“I like dealing with people, so right now I’m looking more into customer service,” he said. “This will give me more opportunities to talk to people and a lot more different people... just get more used to talking to residents in the future.”

While Austin says his teachers have been supportive, he’s not sure how much school has prepared him for his particular future plans.

“I don’t know about that,” he says thinking of his experience at David Douglas High, one of the biggest schools in the state. “It’s a difficult thing when you have so many students and so many different paths they can choose to go on.”

Austin says the “general education” approach at big high schools like David Douglas isn’t tailored to what students like him need, or want, to learn.

“There’s a lot of stuff, even though I learned it, I’m not going to use this,” he said. “I don’t care about triangles.”

Johnathan’s jobs help him explore his passion: cars and motorcycles

In his free time, Johnathan likes to look at motorcycles. In an interview in August, he talked about going to the opening of a new motorcycle cafe in downtown Portland, where he said he saw over 300 bikes.

“One of my dream bikes I saw over there, that I was just ogling for probably two hours,” he recalled. “I was talking to the owner for a lot of it too. I just love to be around motorcycles.”

Johnathan has long liked motorcycles and cars.

“I’d love to be around cars, I’d love to do that for the rest of my life,” he said. “Do something that either has me talking about cars and seeing cars a little bit, like something in an auto parts store, or being a mechanic in a shop and working with cars all day long.”

At the beginning of the summer, Class of 2025 student Johnathan had three jobs — all related to working with cars, including doing his own commercial work.

By late summer, he had cut down to two jobs. He said that that was more manageable, yet still allowed for opportunities to develop both technical and interpersonal skills.

Like Austin, Johnathan goes to David Douglas Online Academy. A major reason students go to DDOA is for the flexibility and to finish classes at their own pace. Johnathan says getting a diploma is important to him.

“I’ve always known in the back of my head that I do need to get this done, get my diploma, get everything here in order to be able to do some stuff in life,” he said.

But, like Austin, he doesn’t see high school classes connecting to what he wants to learn in his life.

“I know it’d be easier to go into higher-level jobs with a diploma,” he said, “but a lot of my mindset on it is — the kind of stuff I see myself doing in my career, I always learn a lot more about just going to work and doing the same thing I want to learn about as I’m working rather than going to school.”

Studies show that if a student gets too involved in work, it may increase their risk of dropping out of high school. According to a 2019 article in the Journal of Research on Adolescence, a busy work schedule might mean less time to spend on homework or participate in extracurricular activities, and giving “less effort to school.”

But there are not as many students facing this work-school balance as one might expect. In Oregon, the most recent state data shows 42% of people 16-19 were participating in the labor force, meaning they were employed or actively searching for jobs.

Related: Oregon’s online schools report graduation rates amid increased enrollment, closer scrutiny

Despite an upward trend in teens seeking employment both in Oregon and nationally, participation in the labor force for 16-to-19-year-olds has been below participation levels in the ‘90s, when over half of teenagers worked, according to the Oregon Department of Education.

Additionally, there isn’t a lot of information about graduation rates for every online school, but the data about graduation rates the state education department does report shows a gap between brick-and-mortar schools and virtual ones.

A new job leads Jason to a new school — and pursuit of a new goal

Jason, another student in the Class of 2025, started senior year this fall at Woodland High School in Woodland, Washington. He’s a quiet kid who likes to play video games.

Jason says he’s always found school kind of boring, and high school has been no different.

So right after senior year started, Jason and his parents filled out an application for TEAM High School, an alternative, mostly-online program in the Woodland School District.

He wanted to finish senior year at a faster pace, on his own.

“I enjoyed online school during COVID,” he wrote in his application.

“Jason finds the traditional classroom setting to be distracting,” his parents wrote in their part of the application to TEAM.

But he also wanted to better balance school with his new job at Walmart Inc., where he can work up to 20 hours a week.

“I’d rather be at home because [it’s] less stress,” he said at his home at the beginning of September.

In an interview with OPB three years ago at the end of freshman year, Jason was hard on himself for not performing as well academically as he wanted. His attitude toward school has changed.

“I really don’t care about my grades anymore like I did, I just want to graduate,” Jason said.

“Work is more important to me now.”

He started his job toward the end of his junior year. And he gets to try a lot of different things — from working as a cashier and stocking shelves to pushing carts and adding barcodes to new items.

His parents say he’s a better communicator now that he has a job.

While Class of 2025 students Austin and Johnathan are gaining clarity about their future careers through the jobs they’re doing, Jason got his job after he started to question assumptions he’d made about his future.

For years when OPB asked Jason what he wanted to be when he grew up, he’d say he wanted to be a paleontologist.

Halfway through high school, he realized he didn’t want that for himself anymore.

“Once that went away, I think he became lost and was just like, whatever, I’ll just get a job,” said Jason’s mom Tara.

“Yeah, that’s true,” Jason agreed.

His parents understand that their son is still figuring out what he wants to do, and that’s OK.

“You don’t have to have a goal at 17,” Jason’s dad Jay remembers telling his son. “You know, it’s good to have some thoughts, but you don’t have to have one.”

In a potential job, Jason is looking for two things: a job that gives him freedom to pursue his hobbies, and a job he doesn’t hate.

“I would like to do a lot of things, so I don’t want a job that I’m just stuck at all times, and I don’t want to be miserable all the time, so I want to have a job that I like, and hopefully it earns money,” he said.

The pressure to become a paleontologist had started to weigh on him. He’s happy without that pressure. But he misses having a goal.

“Now I really don’t know what I want to do, so that kind of sucks,” Jason said.

“I like having a goal, but I can’t think of a goal.”