The project will examine high school and university graduates' transition to work in japan, South Korea, and the United States. The two main research question are: 1) what are the historical, institution, and cultural factors shaping the process through which youth are matched with employers in each society, and 2) what are the implications of these processes for the productivity of the youth labor force and for social inequality? I plan to address these questions by examining the ways that individual youth look for jobs, the ways that schools attempt to place their students into jobs, an the ways that employers recruit new graduates in each society.