Students’ career aspirations do not reflect labour market demand, says OECD

One in five students and one in three socially disadvantaged students across the OECD expect to go into desirable jobs that often require at least a bachelor’s degree, but at the same time do not expect to go to university, according to a new OECD report.

The State of Global Teenage Career Preparation found a significant misalignment of teenagers’ career expectations and the labour market.

The study of 690,000 teenagers in 81 countries, based on data from the 2022 edition of the OECD PISA survey, also found that social background plays a bigger role in determining a student’s educational ambition than academic ability.

On average across OECD countries, low performing students with socio-economically advantaged backgrounds were more likely to expect to complete university education than high performing students from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds.

The report also found that a gender gap remains in students’ aspirations to work in sectors of strategic importance which are experiencing skills shortages, such as information technology and healthcare, despite big shifts in the job market and economic needs.

Across the OECD in 2022, on average 11% of boys said that they will work in information technology around the age of 30, compared to 1.5% of girls.

The job preferences of students were increasingly focused on a small number of jobs in the professions, greatly exceeding actual demand.

Across OECD countries, on average, 50% of girls and 44% of boys expect to work in one of 10 jobs, with little change in job preferences since the year 2000.