The career young people expect

What we expect when we set out upon our careers is varied, but as we can see by the blocks shown on the top left, many of us have similar thinking. For example, the graphic illustrating this post "shows all the jobs [that] fifteen year olds [from a range of countries] listed in the year 2000. The top job was medical doctor, but there's also athlete, decorator, military officer" (Vox, 2023, 0:36). 

Twenty years ago, the researchers compiling the data clustered selected roles into broad categories for analysis, and found that almost half the respondents expected to work in the same ten roles (Vox, 2023).  And what do those young people think now? Well, of the 11% of young women, and 5% of young men who answered this question in 2000, fewer than half a percent of workers in their countries are doctors today (Vox, 2023, 1:17). 

The researchers re-ran the research in 2018... and found the same base-line information: the same ten roles turned up. Of course we don't know how this will compare with people of their age in 2038, but it seems likely to be similar; that few of them will end up working in what they imagined would be their future career. So, is this a problem? 

Well, it might be. US research "tracked thousands of 8th graders [thirteen and fourteen year olds] starting in 1988" (Vox, 2023, 2:14; Tai et al., 2006). One group of students had science ambitions, but had only an average maths performance, and was compared to a non-science ambition group with but high maths achievement (Vox, 2023; Tai et al., 2006). When the groups were tracked through to age 26, the science/average maths group "were far more likely to get a science or engineering degree" despite the lack of maths (Vox, 2023, 2:33; Tai et al., 2006). 

The supposition is that 'ambition' may be the key driver in the achievement of career outcomes: if our rangitahi see a need to go to Uni, they will start planning earlier, align their goals - they will engage Contextual Action Theory - CAT - theory (Young & Valach, 2016). More alarming though is those who lack a clear idea of their future career; those who are 'misaligned'. An Australian study found young people who were "misaligned at 15 were twice as likely to be unemployed or not in school at age 25" (Vox, 2023, 3:26).

One key thing we can all do is to help young people to get a realistic idea what work in a range of fields is like before they start making significant choices at high school. For those who lack clear direction, arranging worksite visits, job shadowing, employer panels, and informational interviewing is a great idea to help them to make their ideas more concrete. 

Then they too can have successful and rewarding working lives.

Sam

References:

Ingels, S. J., Curtin, T. R., Kaufman, P., Alt, M. N., Chen, X., & Owings, J. A. (2002). Coming of Age in the 1990s: The Eighth-Grade Class of 1988 12 Years Later. Initial Results from the Fourth Follow-Up to the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 [Report]. [US Government] National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002321.pdf

Scholes, L., & McDonald, S. (2023). Student career aspirations: the persistence of gender stereotyping [video]. Career Industry Council of Australia. https://www.dropbox.com/s/f5h4a1nmiqfpe3f/Student%20career%20aspirations%20the%20persistence%20of%20gender%20stereotypes%201.mp4

Tai, R. H., Qi Liu, C., Maltese, A. V., & Fan, X. (2006). Planning early for careers in science. Science, 312(5777), 1143-1144. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1128690

Vox. (2023, May 18). Why you’re probably not doing your “dream job” [video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/eMjqJKviDBo

Young, R. A., & Valach, L. (2016). Action and language: Contextual action theory in counselling. Psychologie Française, 61(1), 31-42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psfr.2013.03.001