Changes in the Career Cycle Throughout One's Lifespan, Part 1

The guidelines that we follow for success (Wallace Foundation, 2000) in the workplace have changed in the past few years. Of particular importance, is the effect these changes have on today's youth who one day will be struggling to break into the job market. With positions becoming more technical today, children will need to obtain higher level skills than workers in the past. If those children desire to obtain a high-paying position and advance in their career fields, post-secondary education will be a requirement for most well-paying jobs. If young people today are to be outfitted to make the successful transformation from student to employee at a level where they can succeed, the education facilities servicing them must change considerably.

During the next 10 years (Wallace Foundation, 2000), the amount of 20 to 24 year-olds entering the career market will increase by 21 percent. Employment possibilities will also expand considerably; over 18 million new jobs have been created since 1992 alone.

The requirements to obtain one of the new technical positions have changed. Today, six out of every ten new jobs are designated for "skilled workers." In Teaching the New Basic Skills, authors Murnane and Levy suggest employers now require a plethora of aptitudes and abilities which were not necessary 20 years ago. Skills such as reading and math at the ninth-grade level or higher, analytical problem solving, ability to work in diverse groups, effective interpersonal, written and oral communication skills, and computer literate. As technical and managerial positions take over the job market, labor-intensive manufacturing slots are decreasing.

Based upon the changing tides in our nation's population implies that many youths will be ill-equipped to enter postsecondary education and this highly skilled marketplace. Six out of every ten of the 3.4 million (Wallace Foundation, 2000) new young adults in our country are either Hispanic or non-white-groups whose members are typically less well served by public education and more likely to face discrimination in the workplace. For those students entering the job market, they will soon find themselves ill-equipped to handle any discriminative environment. These young adults may have read about such constraints, but possibly have not lived it. Many young people about to enter the workforce have just left welfare, and an increasing percentage of them are immigrants. In 1996, for example, more than one of every five young adults with fewer than twelve years of schooling was not native born.

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