Career perspectives of young adults

Popular media and other sources tend to argue that young people today, driven by a quest for self-fulfilment, prefer a flexible career over a linear and stable one. However, a survey of young people in Belgium shows that the desire for a stable career is still strong. Moreover, many of the young people with a strong belief in a flexible career model shift towards either a traditional linear perspective or a flat and rigid perspective as they complete more life-course transitions.

Many people claim that the relationship to work as well as the career models and career perspectives of young adults have undergone profound change. A flexible career model driven by ambition and self-realisation is defined as the main career model that young people strive for and desire in today’s society. Young people are said to take the self, rather than the roles associated with work and family, as a reference point: thus, their commitment to work and family becomes less a matter of duty and more a function of the quest for self-realisation. Therefore, young people are expected to be reluctant to make long-term commitments to either specific companies or to a definite career path. It is assumed that, as a consequence of such a shift in the meaning of work and the relationship to work, the traditional desire for a linear career model will be replaced.

About the study

In a recent study, Elchardus and Smits (2008) put this thesis to the test. The analysis is based on a sample of 4,666 inhabitants of Belgium aged 19 to 36 years. The participants completed a written questionnaire during the first months of 2004. Persons with a low level of education were somewhat underrepresented in the sample. Although the sample included only young people, it assembled a group of people who had already experienced a diversity of life-course transitions – end of studies, first work experience, leaving their parents’ home, cohabitation, marriage, first child, purchase of a new home, last child and divorce.

The study uses a cluster analysis to reconstruct empirically a typology of career model perspectives. The main variables measure both career ambitions and the acceptance of flexibility – few or many job transitions. Both are measured as general attitudes and as specific expectations concerning the future.

Main results

Four career models

When taking into account both ambition and the acceptance of, or preference for, flexible careers, two clusters with a flexible career model and two with a stable career model can be identified.

Cluster 1: Stable, upwardly mobile career

The first and largest cluster comprises 38% of the respondents and consists of young adults, the overwhelming majority of whom want to work full time (88%), preferably achieving promotion within the same occupational sector (82%). Almost all of them (95%) expect to earn more in the future. People in this cluster are clearly in favour of a stable, linear career without much flexibility.

Cluster 2: Ambitious and flexible career

The second cluster, comprising 28% of the respondents, consists of young adults who are equally as, or even slightly more, ambitious than the previous group, but who accept and even embrace a flexible career. Their attitude towards flexibility is very positive and no fewer than three out of four of them expect to get promotion or to advance in their career by changing sectors of employment.

Cluster 3: Flat, rigid career

The third cluster, comprising 21% of the respondents, is characterised by a very low level of ambition and a relatively strong rejection of flexibility. It obviously groups young adults who do not want to invest in work. The large majority of them (89%) hope that they will not have to change their sector of employment and do not expect to get promotion.

Cluster 4: Transient and flexible career

One of the flexible clusters, rather small and comprising 13.5% of the survey participants, is characterised by low ambition and a relatively high fear of unemployment. The participants’ acceptance of flexibility appears at least in part as an adaptation to precariousness and uncertainty, rather than as a quest for self-realisation.

Self-realisation and flexible career

The cultural interpretation of career models, suggested by many authors, links the quest for self-realisation to flexibility, and the linear, stable career to the traditional work ethic. That interpretation turns out to be correct, as it is the case among the population under study, at least insofar as the ambitious career models are concerned.

In contrast to what is posited by many authors, the ethic of duty – measured in this study as the traditional work ethic – remains however quite strong. It appears in no way as a marginal source of job motivation.

The cluster with a flexible and ambitious career model distinguishes itself by having a much higher aspiration for self-realisation than the other three clusters. Self-realisation has to be seen in this context as a desire to express individuality and has nothing to do with egoism – the latter refers to motivation based on self-interest and not self-expression.

Impact of life transitions

However, when this career model is put to the test in terms of important life transitions, it quickly vanishes. The confrontation with work, family life and the way in which those institutions are interrelated and articulated pushes the career perspectives of young workers towards the traditional linear and rigid forms. It does so particularly by significantly diminishing the beliefs of the young people surveyed in the career perspectives that are both ambitious and flexible. The more life-course transitions the young people experienced, the less they are interested in the flexible, ambitious career model.

No gender effect

It is clear that the flexible and ambitious career model does not withstand experience, either in the case of men or in the case of women (see table). Over the course of the first nine important adult life transitions mentioned above, the popularity of the two flexible clusters declines, while the preference for linear and rigid careers increases.