Future career choices - will they be influenced by current events?

[grachabacha]

I was a North East teenager during the miners' strikes and pit closures, and I think the memories led me to always prioritise job security over other factors when making career decisions. A friend at the time, whose dad was made redundant, declared at 16 that he was going to be a sewage engineer, so he would never be out of a job.

I suggest to my 2 sons that they do what they're good at, and enjoy, but to be always mindful of areas in the economy where there are skill shortages that they can help to fill and be useful to society.

It seems obvious to me, but that second bit is usually missing from the careers advice they receive in school ... I don't think my boys' schools has ever given students a breakdown of what skills are going to be most in demand in the future, despite it being something that industry and governments publish very clear information about.

I hope it is emphasised more in the wake of this national crisis. We've been turning out generations of young adults who've been told they can be whatever they they want to be, but whose skills are often poorly matched to the many high quality, secure jobs for skilled workers that go unfilled.

It's probably far too soon to tell, but do you think your DC's future career choices will be moulded by the coronavirus and its aftermath?

[RedskyAtnight]

I think there's been a general move towards "studying with a job in mind" rather than "studying a subject because you enjoy it" over recent years.

And I seem to remember that studies show that students from poorer/disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to want to make study choices with a career in mind, rather than just learning for learning's sake.

DS wants to join the army, so if anything, I think he will be even more set on that path following recent events. DD has no idea what she wants to do at all!

[Pebbles574]

Well DS2 wants to pursue a very artsy career which I think will have taken a massive hit through this crisis. We've already had a discussion about whether it might not be better for him to pursue his second choice career, which has slightly better employment odds, and revisit the artsy stuff in the future.