A primary task of early adulthood is vocational choice. The process of defining occupational goals and launching a career are challenging, and involve a whole series of decisions and actions that culminate in most people settling into a job or profession sometime during their twenties. Like so many developmental processes, this one starts at a very young age, proceeds through several typical steps, and can take a variety of pathways. Work represents a crucial life domain, and plays an important role all during middle and late adulthood, potentially influencing psychological and economic well-being, sense of purpose, cognitive and social development, and how the psychosocial task of generativity versus stagnation will be negotiated during middle adulthood. Hopefully, we are each becoming lifelong learners, particularly since we are living longer and will most likely change jobs multiple times during our lives. However, for many, our job changes will be within the same general occupational field, so our initial career choice is still significant. The American School Counselor Association (2017) recommends that school counselors aid students in their career development beginning as early as kindergarten and continue this development throughout their education.

Vocational Interests and Personalities

People are drawn to particular vocations based on the fit between their own interests (or vocational personalities) and the nature of specific work environments. One of the most influential theories of vocational personalities was developed by John Holland (Holland, 1985, 1997). It was introduced in 1959 (Holland, 1959) and is still in use in many areas today, such as career counseling (Nauta, 2010). The theory’s core idea is that people typically fall into one of six “vocational personality” types, each of which is characterized by a profile of interests, preferred activities, beliefs, abilities, values, and characteristics. These interest profiles can be used to identify the kinds of jobs that might be a good match for people with different vocational personalities. It is important to note that many people have more than one set of interests, and would do well in a variety of professions (Holland, 1997; Spokane & Cruza-Guet, 2005).

1. Realistic. People who like solving real world problems; working with their hands; building, fixing, or making things; and operating equipment, tools or machines. May be a good fit for mechanical and manual occupations like engineering, electrician, horticulturist, or farmer.
2. Investigative. People who like to discover and research ideas; observe, investigate and experiment; ask questions and solve problems. May be a good fit for science, research, journalism, medical and health occupations.
3. Artistic. People who enjoy creating or designing things; using art, music, writing, or drama to express themselves; and communicate or perform. Often a good fit to choose occupations in the creative arts, writing, photography, design.
4. Social. People who like people and are concerned for others’ well-being and welfare; and like working with others to teach, train, inform, help, treat, heal, cure, and serve. May be most comfortable in helping or human service professions, like teaching, social work, or counseling.
5. Enterprising. People who are adventurous; and like meeting, leading, and influencing others; like planning and strategizing. Are drawn to business, management, supervisory positions, sales, or politics.
6. Conventional. People who enjoy working indoors at tasks that involve organizing, following procedures, working with data or numbers, planning work and events. May be good fit for fields like business, librarian, office worker, or computer operator.

Occupational decisions are based, not only on people’s interests and values, but also on other factors in their lives, such as financial circumstances, familial influences, and current educational and job opportunities. For example, during the Great Recession that started in 2008, many people who could not find work decided to attend to college and gained additional skills and qualifications. During that same time period, presumably based on economic uncertainty, more undergraduates opted to major in occupational sectors showing job growth and higher salaries, like business, the natural sciences, computing, and engineering (U.S, Department of Education, 2012).

Familial Influences

Families pave the way for their children’s vocational choices, starting before they are born. One of the most important predictors of a young adult’s eventual occupation is the SES of their family of origin. Children from high SES backgrounds have more and better educational opportunities, in the form of higher quality schools with better academic programs, more enrichment activities (e.g., extracurricular activities, clubs, and summer camps focused on topics like science, engineering, computer programming, and robotics), greater access to better quality higher education, and better networks of social capital for seeking internships and jobs (Kalil et al., 2005).

Parents with more wealth and education (and especially mothers with more education) confer a host of advantages on their offspring and these eventually translate into better academic performance at all levels of school, which is one of the strongest predictors of occupational attainment. Families also influence vocational decision-making processes indirectly by the status and range of occupations they model, as well as directly by trying to persuade youth to consider or follow specific career pathways. High SES families also buffer their offspring when young people chose sporadic employment or low paying professions (e.g., artist, musician) by financially subsidizing their career choices.

Parenting style

Research on parenting styles suggests that authoritative parenting provides the greatest support for constructive vocational decision-making since it both encourages youth to discover their own interests and passions, while also helping them develop tools like self-discipline and achievement orientations that will enable them to make progress along their chosen route. Authoritarian parenting, with its rigid demands for obedience and compliance, may interfere with exploratory efforts and lead to premature foreclosure on parentally-specified options. These heavy-handed tactics may sometimes lead to higher occupational attainment (as seen, for example, in some Asian-American or Jewish families) but they can also undermine some of the long-term development fostered by career choices that are a better match for individuals’ interests and proclivities. In other cases, family obligations may lead students to drop out in order to help with financial support (as seen in some Latinx youth, who as a group have the lowest educational attainment but the highest rates of employment of all racial/ethnic groups). Permissive parenting may interfere with young people’s capacities to come to terms with the realities of the job market and delay decision making, whereas neglectful parenting robs youth of the support and scaffolding they need for constructive exploration and decision making, and so may contribute to unemployment or sporadic employment in low skilled jobs.

Upward social mobility

In general, children and youth tend to prefer the kinds of occupations that they see in their parents and neighbors. As a result, youth from high SES families are more likely to prefer and pursue high-status white color professions, such as medicine, law, or academia, whereas those from low SES families are more likely to favor and go into blue collar careers, some of which are high skill (like plumbing, electrician, preschool teacher) and some of which are low skill (food service worker, cashier, delivery driver), but all of which have a lower pay scale. The correspondence in occupations between parents and children is only partly a function of familiarity, persuasion, and similarity in personality and interests (Ellis & Bonin, 2003; Schoon & Parsons, 2002). It also reflects the extent to which high and low SES families can “launch” children into higher status careers.

All parents can foster high educational and occupational aspirations. Over and above the effects of SES, career attainment is predicted by parental guidance, high demands and expectations to succeed in school, and pressure toward high-status jobs (Bryant et al., 2006; Stringer & Kerpelman, 2010). In a process called upward mobility, a young person can break out of the SES level of their family of origin, as seen for example, in the great success of many first generation college students. Based on multiple societal trends, however, upward social mobility has gotten increasingly difficult over the last several decades.

Societal and Cultural Factors

Many of the factors that are typically described as “family influences” on vocational decision making also reflect powerful societal and political forces that shape young people’s educational and occupational opportunities. For example, trends in politics and business have reduced well-paying employment opportunities in the blue collar sector over the last several decades. These trends include the loss of manufacturing jobs, increases in automation, the growth of the information economy, the stagnation of the minimum wage, weakening or breaking up unions, economic recessions and patterns of unemployment or underemployment that disproportionately disadvantage low SES and minority workers.

Alternative societal decisions would make it much easier for young people to find meaningful work and to be able to support themselves and their families on their wages. Successful strategies employed in other countries include policies designed to promote job growth, reduce income inequality, provide access to free high-quality higher education and job (re)training, maintaining the minimum wage at a level that keeps up with the cost of living, subsidizing child care, and making sure that healthcare is free or affordable and not tied to specific jobs. These decisions influence the vocational options (and quality of life) open, not only to young people entering the job market, but to workers all across the lifespan.

Teacher Support and Encouragement

Many youth who go on to careers that require prolonged education or training report that their vocational decision making process was influenced by their teachers. During high school or college, their teachers took a special interest, and mentored or otherwise encouraged them to continue along certain occupational pathways (Bright et al., 2005; Reddin, 1997). High school students that go on to college tend to have more positive connections with teachers than non-college-bound students, and such close relationships promote higher career aspirations, especially in young women (Wigfield et al., 2002). Such connections are especially important to first generation students and students from underrepresented minority backgrounds who may not have many role models in their immediate family.

Gender Stereotypes

Gender disparities in occupational status and income have steadily decreased over the last several decades, as more and more women enter the labor force. Gender-role attitudes are changing, and girls show greater interest in male-dominated professions, but progress has been slow. Although girls typically outperform boys academically all throughout school, and graduate from college at higher rates (both overall and within every racial/ethnic group), they reach high school less confident in their academic competence, more likely to underestimate their achievement, and less interested in careers in mathematics, natural science, and engineering (Ceci & Williams, 2010; Parker et al., 2012). During college, many women’s career aspirations further decline as they worry about their capacity to succeed in challenging classes and careers in science and mathematics, and wonder whether they will be able to combine a high-powered career with responsibilities of children and families (Chhin et al., 2008; Wigfield et al., 2006)

Women are still concentrated in a subset of college majors and in lower-status and less-well-paid occupations (US Census Bureau, 2019). Untangling this problem requires a two-fold solution. First, high school and college teachers must be sensitized to the roadblocks, discrimination, and prejudice girls and women face based on entrenched myths about their natural aptitude for male dominated subjects and professions. To reverse internalized biases, girls and women would also benefit from some support in reworking these narratives to counteract their own concerns and insecurities. Many programs are now in place to increase the participation and success of women and ethnic minority students in STEM fields. These programs typically include active recruitment, mentoring, creation of supportive peer cohorts, and guided research experiences, and have been somewhat successful at increasing graduation rates for some subgroups of students.

A second correction to gender disparities in income involves improving the status and salary levels for traditionally female occupations, like childcare, eldercare, teaching, social work, and nursing. These occupations are of great benefit to society, yet workers are not paid in ways commensurate with this value. Society needs to reexamine its priorities, when someone who trades in financial markets where nothing of value is produced are paid hundreds of times more than people whose dedication keeps premature infants alive or supports the frail elderly during their twilight years.

Compared to women, men have changed little in their occupational choices; few pursue nontraditional careers, such as nursing or teaching elementary school. Those who do are less gender-typed, more liberal in their social attitudes, less concerned with social status, and more interested in working with and helping people (Dodson & Borders, 2006; Jome et al., 2005). Men in non-traditional careers generally report high satisfaction in their work, but also note that they have to deal with biases and stigma about their decisions to pursue lower-status occupations, especially from other men.

Non-College-Bound Youth

According to the US Census, the highest level of education completed by 28.1% of the labor force (i.e., population age 25 and older) is high school, whereas 22.5% finished four years of college. Rates vary significantly by race/ethnicity: According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the share of the labor force with at least a high school diploma was more than 90% each for Whites, Blacks, and Asians; but 76% for Hispanics. And 63% of Asians in the labor force had a bachelor’s degree and higher, compared with 41% of Whites, 31% of Blacks, and 21% of Hispanics.

As a result, approximately one-third of young people who graduate high school do not go to college. This decision has a big impact on their career options. Most of them find it difficult to secure a job other than the ones they held during high school. Although high school graduates are more likely to find employment than young people who dropped out of high school, they have fewer occupational opportunities than their counterparts from earlier cohorts. During times of recession, those prospects worsen as positions that become available are taken by (sometimes overqualified) college graduates. Before the recession created by the pandemic in 2020, unemployment rates for 24-35 year-olds who dropped out of high school were about 43%; for those who graduated high school about 26%, and for those who graduated college about 13% (National Center for Education Statistics).

The discouraging prospects of non-college bound youth are also a product of societal decisions about the educational and occupational tracks available in US schools. In contrast, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, and several Eastern European countries have intentionally created national apprenticeship programs that facilitate the transition from high school to work. For example, about two-thirds of German students do not attend college preparatory high schools. Instead, starting in middle school, they head down a vocational track toward one of the most successful work-study apprenticeship programs for entering business and industry in the world. At age 15 or 16, during the last two years of compulsory education, they begin a program that combines part-time vocational courses with an apprenticeship that is jointly sponsored by educators and employers (Deissinger, 2007). Students who finish the program and pass a qualifying exam are certified as skilled workers and enter occupations whose wages are set and protected by unions.

Industries provide funding for these apprenticeship programs because it is clear that they provide a dependable supply of motivated and skilled workers (Kerckhoff, 2002). In addition, such programs encourage students to stay in school and allow young people to begin productive work lives directly after high school. Providing a pipeline between the worlds of school and work not only benefits youth themselves, but also provides value to the rest of society by contributing to national economic growth. To date, only small-scale work-study programs are attempting to bridge this gap in the US, but larger scale national programs are needed.

Vocational development is an important task for young adults, but the process of defining occupational goals and launching a career are challenging. Young people know that their occupational choices can have lifelong consequences. Jobs are sources of income and so influence living conditions and recreational options; they are how people spend much of their time and so fill their waking hours; workplaces can become extended “neighborhoods” or “families;” and they can provide a source of meaning and identity. No wonder young people may feel that the stakes are high. To constructively negotiate this task, they need the support of family, schools, workplaces, and the larger society.