Around the world, young people are leaving education more highly qualified than any generation in history and yet they continue to struggle in the competition for desirable employment. While young people entering the labour market with the greatest amount of education are more protected, smooth transitions are by no means guaranteed with over-qualification commonplace.
The OECD PISA study surveys hundreds of thousands of 15-year-olds across the globe every three years. It consistently shows that employers are signalling poorly to young people. In Canada, the 2018 results found that one-quarter of students were unable to describe the type of work they expect to be doing in adulthood. Of those with clear expectations, more than half of boys and girls anticipate working in one of just 10 most popular professions.
Ambition is high: 84% expect to pursue post-secondary education and 74% expect to work as a manager or professional (up from 61% in 2000). Only one in eight young Canadians expects to work in skilled employment, typically entered through programs of vocational education and training, while two in five anticipate working in an occupation at high risk of full or partial automation or digitalization over the next 10 years. The career expectations of Canadian youth poorly reflect actual patterns of labour market demand.
Societies turn to career guidance to prepare students for the opportunities and challenges of the modern working world, but there is growing concern that provision to date has been insufficient to meet needs. The capacity of career guidance systems to smooth the transitions of young people has been long limited by lack of robust longitudinal data investigating the relationship between teenage interventions and actual adult employment outcomes. As recently as 2016, one international literature review found that research into the impact of guidance could best be characterized as “weak and fragmented” with “significant shortages in quasi-experimental and experimental studies” (Hughes et al., 2016).
“The career expectations of Canadian youth poorly reflect actual patterns of labour market demand.”
Last year, however, the evidence base significantly improved. New OECD analysis of longitudinal datasets in 10 countries, including Canada, represents the most comprehensive review yet undertaken to confirm ‘what works’ in career guidance. The study made use of datasets that follow the same cohorts of young people from childhood to adulthood, collecting information about their teenage participation in guidance as well as their personal and social backgrounds. Using statistical analysis, 11 guidance-related predictors of better employment outcomes (lower unemployment rates, higher wages, greater job satisfaction) were confirmed in multiple countries.
The predictors themselves group into three coherent areas related to how teenagers explore, experience and think about their potential futures in work. One striking finding from the study is the common inclusion of activities and experiences that bring students into direct contact with employers and people in work. Among the predictors are those which can only take place with the support of members of the economic community (job fairs/career talks from guest speakers, workplace visits, volunteering and part-time employment) and others that are substantially enhanced by their involvement (job application skills development such as interview practice and the drafting of resumes and short, occupationally focused courses that take place within general education, like Canadian co-op programs).
It should come as no surprise that employer engagement enriches career guidance. It has been long understood that employers and people who are working offer something that is hard for schools to replicate without their involvement. When young people connect with employers, they gain access to new information and experiences that are demonstrably authentic. Employer engagement helps young people develop the human capital (workplace experience), social capital (useful networks) and cultural capital (vocational identity) that underpin the development of student agency and ultimately help persuade employers that a new hire would not present a risk.
The OECD argues that benefits can be optimized when schools:
- Provide frequent opportunities for students to engage in authentic, varied activities that are delivered within a program of guidance,
- Require participation in activities at a younger age and provide more personalized provision later in school life,
- Make such engagement a regular part of school life (OECD, 2022b).
Beginning young is especially important. By the age of five, children have begun thinking about their futures in work, but their perceptions are inevitably very narrow and they often struggle to connect them to their classroom learning. Aspirations are heavily shaped by social background, notably gender – so who better than an employee volunteer of a less-represented gender within a profession to meet with children to help them understand from an early age that girls really do become engineers and boys regularly go into nursing.
What’s less known, however, is just how much employers have to gain themselves from working with schools. The new OECD Career Readiness Indicators show that when students take part in career preparation enriched by employer engagement, they can commonly expect lower levels of unemployment as young adults. Put another way, they become more attractive to employers – and substantially so. The wage premiums that 25-year-olds often enjoy typically ranges between 5% and 10%.
For employers, a clear argument follows: when they engage with schools to support guidance activities, young people can expect to broaden and deepen their understanding of the labour market, becoming better placed themselves to find good matches between their interests and abilities and available jobs. Better matches link to greater productivity and higher wages. Longitudinal studies also find many significant relationships between teenage guidance and greater job satisfaction – something that everyone surely wants to see.
For education systems, the challenge is to make it quick and easy for schools to connect with employers and people in work. Delivery systems can be judged on how effective, efficient and equitable they are:
- effective systems will ensure that young people are given opportunity to connect with the right person at the right time in the right activity
- efficient systems will run at a low unit cost (ideally free for all users)
- equitable approaches will intervene to ensure that schools serving the most disadvantaged students receive the greatest access to the economic community
Over recent years, online systems such as Inspiring the Future in the UK and New Zealand that respond to these three challenges have reached millions of students.
With the labour markets becoming more turbulent as demand for skills changes in green and post-COVID economies, work tasks change in light of digitalization, and automation and post-secondary education and training become more marketized, young people’s decision making inevitably becomes more difficult. In these circumstances, it is more important than ever that students have access to regular encounters with employers and people in work from a young age, supported by their counsellors to prepare and reflect well on their experiences as they embark on transitions which are full of risk as well as opportunity.
Further reading
Covacevich, C., et al. (2021), “Indicators of teenage career readiness: An analysis of longitudinal data from eight countries”, OECD Education Working Papers, No. 258, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/cec854f8-en
Hughes, D., et al. (2016) “Careers Education: International Literature Review”, Education Endowment Foundation, London, https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/evidence-reviews/careers-education
Mann, A., et al. (2022), “Meet the future – how employers gain from helping young people get career ready”, OECD Education and Skills, https://issuu.com/oecd.publishing/docs/meet-the-future
Mann, A. et al. (2018), “Employer engagement in education: Insights from international evidence for future research”, Education Endowment Foundation, UK, https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/evidence-reviews/employer-engagement-in-education
OECD (2021a), “Career Readiness in the Pandemic: Insights from new international research for secondary schools”, OECD Education Policy Perspectives, No. 44, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/8b1215dc-en
OECD (2021b), “Getting the most out of employer engagement in career guidance”, OECD Education Policy Perspectives, No. 36, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/fbbc3788-en
