A study by Illinois State professors Kimberly Schneider and Patricia Jarvis (and reported by Business News Daily) has found that adolescents employed as sales clerks or flipping burgers are more likely to be sexually harassed by older co-workers than adult employees, and more likely to be harassed than adolescents in jobs that provided more meaningful work and autonomy.

Significantly, such harassment can lead to lower job satisfaction, lower skill development (especially in females), and can impact performance in school, absenteeism, tardiness and grades.  

Why the disparity between low and higher skill jobs?   It should come as no surprise that victims of harassment are more often of “relatively low status and power in the workplace," stated one of the professors. As with people victimized throughout society, they are more often the victims of this “power differential.”