The State of Global Teenage Career Preparation

Introduction

This is the second OECD overview of the global state of teenage career preparation. The first was launched in January 2020 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Our publication, Dream Jobs: Teenagers' Career Aspirations and the Future of Work, provided important new insights into the significant challenges that young people face as they complete formal schooling.

The study showed that by the age of 15 career aspirations were strongly shaped by social background and highly concentrated with many students planning to work in jobs at significant risk of automation. Career guidance could be seen in the data to enhance the readiness of young people to progress through education towards desired careers, but many students had not yet engaged in beneficial activities.

Dream Jobs was based on data from the 2018 round of the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We now present key findings from PISA 2022, the world’s largest dataset on young people’s educational experiences and attitudes. In PISA 2022, 690 000 students from 81 countries completed assessments on their proficiency in mathematics, reading and science and provided substantial background information about their lives and schools. They responded moreover to questions concerning their career and educational plans, their participation in career development activities, attitudes towards career progression and participation in part-time work.

With large representative samples from each participating jurisdiction, not only can PISA compare national experiences, but we can also unpack the data to explore how career preparation varies by student characteristics such as gender and social background. PISA 2022 represents the largest ever comparative international survey of student career thinking and preparation.

Between the two studies, much has changed. We have endured a global pandemic, inflation and economic instability, growing concerns over climate change and a period of intense technological change with Artificial Intelligence becoming adopted across economic and educational life. All these factors serve to create greater instability in the labour market, making career planning both more challenging and more important for young people. Over the same period, it has become clearer than ever that teenage career development works. Guidance interventions can be expected to make a positive difference to young people as they transition into the world of work.

Within the data on the career preparation of students contained in PISA 2022, some points of information are particularly important. This is because recent analyses of multiple longitudinal datasets from different countries consistently highlight strong statistical relationships between different forms of teenage career development and thinking and better ultimate employment outcomes. Our 2021 paper, How youth explore, experience and think about their future, summarises analyses of datasets from ten countries. It finds strong associations between the ways in which students, typically around the age of 15, engage in different forms of career development and better results in the labour market as found in employment/unemployment rates, earnings and career satisfaction, typically around the age of 25.

The analysis, which takes account of student gender, social background, academic achievement and other factors which influence success in the competition for work, identifies important teenage predictors of better outcomes. PISA gathers information about many of these indicators. We know that when students actively explore their potential futures in work, they can expect them to do better later than would otherwise be expected.

In PISA, data is available on student career exploration through workplace visits or job shadowing, in job fairs and career conversations. Such activities connect students with people in work, a hugely valuable resource within career development. Studies find too that first-hand experiences of undertaking tasks under supervision within workplaces are also routinely associated with better long-term employment prospects for young people. PISA 2022 allows us to compare how students engage in short work placements (internships) and for some countries in part-time employment while PISA 2018 gathered information about volunteer work. These are all forms of career development that give students unrivalled opportunity to gain skills and insights relevant to occupations of interest, to meet and learn from people doing such jobs, and to build confident insight into how they can best navigate systems of education and training to achieve job ambitions.

Longitudinal studies show us moreover that the ways in which teenagers think about their potential futures in work matters. Young people who express clear job plans around the age of 15 can expect to do better ten years later than comparable peers who are uncertain about their ambitions. Equally, students who are confident that their schools will be able to help them to achieve their aspirations and who understand what desired occupations typically require in terms of educational achievement can anticipate better outcomes. PISA asks students many relevant questions surrounding such career thinking. It also allows us to observe how student participation in career development activities is linked to the career thinking that makes a difference. For schools, insights from longitudinal studies shape many useful questions that can be asked of students as staff seek to identify girls and boys in need of greater support.

What this review of global teenage career preparation reveals

This paper focuses on eight key questions to which PISA data provides often uncomfortable answers.

1. Rapidly growing numbers of students are uncertain about their career plans, linking with poorer ultimate employment outcomes.

2. Students’ job plans focus on a small number of predominantly professional occupations which compare poorly to actual patterns of employer demand.

3. Many students, especially from more disadvantaged backgrounds, are confused about what they need to do to achieve their career plans.

4. Overwhelmingly, social background is a stronger determinant of plans for tertiary education than academic ability as tested on the PISA assessments.

5. Too few students are participating in career development activities which are most strongly linked with better ultimate outcomes in employment.

6. Across the OECD, students from more advantaged social backgrounds can expect to engage more in guidance than their disadvantaged classmates who will typically have greater need for support.

7. The interest of girls and boys in occupational fields of strategic importance where their gender is historically underrepresented has changed little over the last generation.

8. Many students feel poorly prepared for their futures and doubt that their schools are helping them in their career preparation.

Looking across the PISA 2022 data, while jurisdictions vary considerably in the extent to which students are being effectively prepared for their career progression, it is clear on average that too many students are poorly equipped for their next steps. On average across OECD countries, by the age of 15:

• 39% of students are unclear about their career expectations.

• 21% can be classified as ‘misaligned’ in their career thinking – expecting to work in a job that typically requires a university education, but not expecting to complete tertiary education.

• 33% would not agree that ‘school has taught me things which could be useful in a job’.

By this age, only:

• 35% have attended a job fair.

• 45% have participated in a workplace visit or job shadowed.

• 35% have completed an internship.

Students in greatest need are often getting the least support

PISA allows us to compare the career development of students by a range of personal and social characteristics. We find that gender and migrant status often influence student preparation for, and thinking about, the future. Systematically for example, girls are less likely than boys to engage in career development activities that connect them with people in work. It is also apparent that often it is students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds who exhibit career thinking of greatest concern and who participate less frequently in guidance activities. If we compare the most socially advantaged quarter of students to their least advantaged peers, it is apparent that career misalignment is concentrated among the latter group. PISA 2022 shows that whereas one student in three from within the most disadvantaged quartile can be categorized as misaligned in their career thinking, this applies to only one in ten of their most privileged peers. Misalignment is a form of career confusion and is strongly connected in longitudinal studies with poorer than expected employment outcomes. Similarly, disadvantaged students are more likely to be uncertain about their career plans and less likely see schooling as valuable to their futures in work, two further predictors of poorer outcomes.

One of the most striking findings from PISA 2022 is that on average across the OECD students from the most socially disadvantaged backgrounds who achieve well on the PISA academic assessments are less likely to expect to complete tertiary education than socially advantaged peers whose academic performance suggests strongly that they will struggle to complete such a level of education. In 2022 across the OECD, social background is a stronger determinant of education ambition than academic ability.

While longitudinal studies provide the best available evidence exploring the long-term impacts of teenage career development, information is limited. By definition, studies focus on activities undertaken a decade or more ago and many longitudinal surveys ask few relevant questions. One way that more current and comprehensive data can be collected is by asking questions of young adults who have recently left secondary education.

Surveys of adults aged 19-26 have been undertaken in the Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. All explore the perspectives of the users of guidance systems. In Madrid, Spain 1,015 young adults who had participated in secondary education within the region were asked which forms of career development they participated in while in secondary school and if having done so, whether the activities proved helpful to them after leaving school. Overwhelmingly, users of the system felt that they were useful to them, often very useful (Figure 0.1), but that frequently many youth completed secondary education without such opportunity for career development.

Figure 0.1. Percentage of young adults in Madrid, Spain recalling participation in a career development activities while in secondary education and if having done so, perceptions on activities being very useful in ‘planning and preparing for working life after secondary education.’

Note. Survey of 1 015 young adults (aged 19-26) who had attended secondary education in the Community of Madrid, Spain. The survey was undertaken in the summer of 2024.

Source. OECD survey of young adults in Madrid, Mann, A. et al. (2025), Career Readiness in Madrid (Spain): insights from a survey of young adults (19-26), OECD Publishing, Paris.

The essential role of employer engagement

The reason why we launched Dream Jobs with Education and Employers at Davos in 2020 during the World Economic Forum was to underline the essential importance of employer engagement in the career development of students. A further important take away from our review of longitudinal datasets is that the career development activities which connect students directly with people in work and workplaces are strongly linked with long-term boosts in employment. Whereas activities such as job fairs, workplace visits, job shadowing and internships cannot take place without the involvement of people in work, other predictors of better outcomes such as student participation in career conversations and Career Pathway programmes, and the development of recruitment skills (CV workshops and interview practice) routinely involve employers and are enhanced by them.

Something special happens when students engage with people in work. It is a form of social capital. Students gain opportunity to access information and advice about the world of work and how it might relate to them individually in ways which are especially trustworthy and relevant. It allows young people to envision new potential futures for themselves and to challenge stereotypical ideas about the sorts of people who are suited for different professions. As the saying goes, if you can’t see it, you can’t be it. Employer engagement also provides students with chances to develop new relationships of long-term value, leading to recommendations or job offers. Effective guidance demands extensive student engagement with workplaces and people in work and the afterword of this paper explores in detail why this is the case and how it can be best delivered.

An urgent need for greater investment in effective career development

Never before have so many young people left education more highly qualified and with more years of schooling, but often we see them struggling to activate their accumulated human capital in the labour market. Across the OECD, overwhelmingly students now stay in education or training until at least 18 years and often older. As they progress, they are required to make ever more decisions about what they will study, where they will study and how hard they will engage in learning. Societies introduce programmes of career guidance to help students make informed decisions that enable progression towards achievable and personally fulfilling ambitions. The presence in many societies of unemployed graduates alongside extensive skill shortages highlights failures in the system.

There are simple ways in which guidance systems can be improved in many jurisdictions. As well engaging more systematically with workplaces and people in work, more effective provision will begin early in school life. In too many systems, guidance provision happens only towards the end of schooling. The most important decisions that students make – about their engagement in education – happen continually from the earliest years of education.

The career thinking demonstrated by students at age 15 is the product of many years of opportunity (and lack of opportunity) to discuss, explore and experience potential futures in light of their educational involvement.

Assuredly, schooling is about more than the preparation for work, but we owe it to our young people that they go through education blind neither to the breadth of opportunities presented by the working world nor its potential pitfalls. We can and must do better — PISA 2022 challenges jurisdictions to view these results as a baseline from which educational provision can be significantly improved in most countries.

A new OECD dashboard on teenage career readiness

PISA 2022 provides considerably more data than it is possible to present in this paper and to coincide with its publication, a new OECD dashboard on teenage career readiness, also kindly supported by Education and Employers and Amazon, has been launched to allow for comparisons between and within jurisdictions. For the first time, it will be possible to easily measure the differences in student expectations and assumptions, an important step in the continuing enhancement of guidance provision.

Andreas Schleicher

OECD Director for Education and Skills

Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary General

Across the OECD, PISA 2022 shows that 39% of students can now be classified as career uncertain.