Dream Jobs? Teenagers' Career Aspirations and the Future of Work
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)What is it?
This working paper raises concerns over the extent to which youth are being prepared for the jobs of the future. With young people staying in education longer than ever and the labour market automating with unprecedented speed, students need help to make sense of the world of work. In 2018, the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the world's largest dataset on young people's educational experiences, collected first-of-its kind data on this, making it possible to explore how much the career dreams of young people have changed over the past 20 years, how closely they are related to actual labour demand, and how closely aspirations are shaped by social background and gender. By comparing results over the PISA cycles, going back to the year 2000, it traces changes in attitudes and experiences of young people over a generation.
HIGHLIGHTS
The paper focuses on questions related to the following:
- Career concentration: the extent to which young people's occupational expectations are concentrated in the 10 most commonly cited jobs, how they have changed over time and how they vary between different types of learner;
- Labour market relevance: how young people's occupational expectations are related to national projections of labour market demand;
- Job realism: the risk that the jobs young people expect to be pursuing at age 30 will become automated;
- Career potential: whether occupational expectations reflect the academic potential of students;
- Career confusion: the extent to which students are misaligned in their educational and occupational expectations;
- Providing guidance: whether participation in career development activities can be seen to make a difference to career thinking;
- Career participation: how participation in career development activities has changed over time and varies between different types of learner.