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Things to Remember

· The reality of the global economy and its implications for employment in the United States

· Why the need for career development services may be at its highest level in half a century

· The language of career development The reasons that careers and career development are important in the fight for social justice

· The major events in the history of career development

History of Vocational Guidance and Career Development

As will be discussed later in this chapter, there are currently calls for the adoption of a new paradigm for the theory and practice of career counseling and career development services that focuses on both individuals and the social contexts in which they function. These ideas are not new, but throughout much of the twentieth century they were neglected. The call for understanding the individual and how he or she is influenced by his or her context is a century-old echo of the voices of the social reformers who founded the vocational guidance movement in education, business, industry, and elsewhere. Reformers in Boston, Massachusetts; San Francisco, California; and Grand Rapids, Michigan, focused on immigrants from Europe who came to the United States by the tens of thousands; high school dropouts who were unprepared for the changing workplace; oppression in the workplace; substandard public schools; and the need to apply scientific principles to career planning and vocational education. It is the latter idea, the focus on scientific principles that has received the most criticism, along with the failure to adequately address multicultural issues. Currently, some career development specialists are urging practitioners to abandon theories and strategies rooted in modern philosophies in favor of those rooted in postmodernism.

Looking backward to 1913 and earlier, it is worth noting that social reformers formed the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education (NSPIE) in 1906, which became the parent organization of the National Vocational Guidance Association (NVGA) in 1913. These reformers were advocates for vocational education, and they carried their fight to state legislators, to the National Education Association, and beyond. One of NSPIE’s achievements was drafting and successfully lobbying for the passage of the Smith–Hughes act in 1917, legislation that laid the foundation for land grant universities and vocational education in public schools (Stephens, 1970).

These earlier reformers were advocates. One mechanism they used to initiate local reforms was the settlement house, which was a place in a working-class neighborhood that housed researchers who studied people’s lives and problems in that neighborhood. In 1901, Frank Parsons founded the Civic Service House in Boston’s North End, and in 1908, the Vocation Bureau, an adjunct of the Boston Civic Service House, was opened. Leaders working out of the North End house established trade unions and generally conducted other activities aimed at empowering workers. These reformers also performed a variety of educational activities aimed at improving vocational skills. In the Boston Civic Service House, these activities were conducted under the auspices of the Breadwinners’ Institute and the Vocation Bureau (Stephens, 1970).

The Employment Management Association (EMA), a federal agency, was formed in 1913. Its goal was to promote vocational guidance in business and industry. EMA, NVGA, NSPIE, and other organizations lobbied aggressively for systemic changes in business, education, and governmental agencies during the early years of the twentieth century and were highly successful, perhaps because more than 50 groups united in collaborative efforts to advocate for needed reforms. According to Stephens (1970), the interest in reform had dissipated by the late 1920s because of dissension within NVGA and disagreements among NVGA and other organizations, such as the National Education Association, with which they had partnered to pursue reform.

As can be seen in Table 1.1, formal interest in facilitating career development and occupational choice began in the nineteenth century in places such as San Francisco and Grand Rapids.

Table 1.1 Historical Highlights of Vocational Guidance, Career Development, and Career Counseling in the United States

Sources: J. M. Brewer (1942); F. W. Miller (1968); A. P. Picchioni and E. C. Bonk (1983); M. Pope (2000); J. J. Schmidt (1999); J. A. Holstein and J. F. Gubrium (2000).

Pioneers such as George Merrill, Jesse B. Davis, Anna Y. Reed, and Frank Parsons began a movement that still impacts the lives of millions in the twenty-first century. These social reformers gave the vocational guidance movement its direction. The development of psychometric instruments that could be used to promote self-exploration and as selection devices for business and industry during and after World War I introduced a scientific dimension to the movement and provided much-needed tools for practitioners. However, it was not until the Great Depression of the 1930s that systematic occupational information became available in the form of the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT). This publication served as the basis for much of the occupational literature until the development of the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), which was published late in the twentieth century. The transition from the DOT to O*NET was completed in 2001.

Another school of thought was emerging in sociology that was little noticed by psychologists and career counselors. Postmodernism would not manifest itself fully among career development specialists until late in the twentieth century. However, Charles Horton Cooley, William James, and George Herbert Mead were thinking and writing about an idea—symbolic interactionism (Holstein & Gubrium, 2000)—that would come to full flower as a postmodern approach to career development (see Savickas, 2013).

The decade of the 1970s was an eventful time for career development in public schools because of federal support of a concept known as career education, in which funding was provided for 500 career education programs in school districts throughout the United States. However, more than 9,000 school districts experimented with career education in different forms according to Kenneth Hoyt (2005), and remnants of these programs exist in various forms today. The 2003 American School Counselor Association (ASCA) model for comprehensive school counseling programs as amended in 2008 contains many of the same elements as the career development envisioned by Hoyt in 1977.

Serious efforts began in the mid-1960s to apply computer technology to career and educational planning and assessment and for the provision of educational and occupational information. Jo Ann Harris-Bowlsbey was instrumental in the planning that led to the development of the Computerized Vocational Information System (CVIS) in 1968. CVIS provided a method for storing information on about 400 occupations. It continued as a pilot program until 1972, when it was established as a demonstration project and widely adopted (Harris-Bowlsbey, 1990, 2013).

During this same period, Donald Super and Roger Myers of Columbia University were working with Frank Minor of IBM to develop the Educational and Career Exploration System (ECES). David Tiedeman, then of Harvard University, developed the Information System for Vocational Decisions (ISVD). These were ambitious projects that attempted to incorporate much of the career counseling process into their software programs. From a technological point of view, these programs, which reached the operational stage between 1969 and 1970, were ahead of their time because of their heavy use of computer time (Harris-Bowlsbey, 2013). Today, desktop computers handle programs such as DISCOVER and SIGI PLUS, which are direct descendants of ISVD and ECES.

Career development has a rich history and, if people such as Hoyt (2005) are correct, a bright future. However, the zeal with which the early leaders of the vocational guidance movement attacked the career-related problems of their time must be recaptured by twenty-first century practitioners. Why? The problems confronting practitioners today have many parallels with the issues faced by the founders of the career development movement. There is a tide of legal and illegal immigrants entering the United States who hope to find work that will meet their economic needs. Providing career development services to illegal immigrants and their children is a unique challenge that has not been confronted previously because of the legal issues involved in the citizenship status of these people. However, as Storlie (2011) notes, the Supreme Court (Plyler v. Doe) has ruled that undocumented children and adolescents have a right to a K to 12 education, thus giving school counselors an opportunity to provide career services to those students. Reaching the citizens in the United States who have been economically marginalized because of oppression and discrimination provides an entirely different, but equally important, challenge. Later in the chapter, I will explore the call for a new approach to career development that will better serve our diverse client groups.

The Need for Career Development Services

It is not an exaggeration to say that the need for career development services is at its highest point since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In August 2013, the unemployment rate stood at 7.4 percent, which translates to 11.7 million unemployed people looking for work. An additional 11 million were underemployed, which is defined as working part time but wanting to work full time. Uncounted millions of others who want to work have been pushed into early retirement or into accepting Social Security Disability insurance instead of continuing work because of lack of opportunity in the labor force. Another category of workers—often referred to as discouraged workers, because they have given up searching for a job—numbered 850 thousand. When the number of unemployed is added to the discouraged workers, the number comes to 12.5 million people out of work (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Harrington, 2013). If the number of workers who are involuntarily employed part time is added to the unemployed group, it is not a stretch to suggest that nearly 23 million people are suffering from some form of job loss angst. Moreover, this number does not include the workers who are employed in positions that do not allow them to use the job-related knowledge and skills they have developed. No reliable data exists regarding the number that fall into this underemployed category, but the numbers would likely be in the millions.

The Language of Career Development

Like all educational and psychological practitioners, career development practitioners, whether they are counselors, psychologists, or placement specialists, have a specialized vocabulary that must be mastered by the neophyte. Some words in this specialized vocabulary have already been introduced: career, career development, and work. Although jargon relating to career choice and development is interspersed throughout this book, some additional specialized vocabulary related to career development is defined and discussed in this section.

It should be noted that universal agreement regarding some of the words used to describe various aspects of career choice and development has not been reached. For example, some counselors and psychologists (e.g., Holland, 1997) have retained the word vocation and use it synonymously with the words job and occupation. However, many career counselors and psychologists reject the term vocation, because it is associated with the idea that people are “called,” sometimes by God, to their occupations instead of being active participants in choosing them. This latter group has adopted the term career choice to denote the process of selecting a career, whereas other practitioners have retained the term vocational choice. Two of the leading publications of research dealing with career/vocational development are the Journal of Vocational Behavior and the Career Development Quarterly. Both journals publish material related to career choice and development, but their titles reflect the preferences of the groups that publish them. As will be seen, the semantic argument about which terms are most meaningful and descriptive is not restricted to the terms career and vocation. Disagreements abound about which terms are most useful to describe various aspects of career development.

Defining Position, Job, Occupation, Career, and Career Development

Just as work and job are often used interchangeably, so are the terms position, job, occupation, and career. More than five decades ago, occupational sociologists, such as Shartle (1959), advanced useful definitions of these terms that have since been endorsed by the NCDA. Shartle defined position as a group of tasks performed by one individual; thus, as many positions exist as the number of individuals working. A job, according to Shartle, is a group of similar positions in a single business, and an occupation is a group of similar jobs in several businesses.

The definitions of position, job, and occupation are relatively straightforward and are widely accepted, but there is some controversy over the meaning of career, as shown by the following five relatively recent definitions of career:

· The totality of work one does in a lifetime (Sears, 1982).

· Career = work + leisure (McDaniels, 1989).

· A sequence of positions that one holds during a lifetime, of which occupation is only one (Hansen, 1997).

· The course of events that constitutes a life; the sequence of occupations and other life roles that combine to express one’s commitment to work in his or her total pattern of self-development (Super, 1976, p. 4).

· Careers are unique to each person and created by what one chooses or does not choose. They are dynamic and unfold throughout life. They include not only occupations but prevocational and post-vocational concerns as well as integration of work with other roles: family, community, and leisure (Herr & Cramer, 1996).

By examining these five definitions, we can immediately get a sense of the problem involved in defining career. The definitions by Super (1976) and Herr and Cramer (1996) are based on a holistic lifestyle concept of career and reflect their beliefs that all life roles are interrelated. Although few people would dispute the idea that life roles are interrelated, it is obvious that the definition of career advanced by these authors is not universally accepted. The definition offered by McDaniels (1989) is more circumscribed in that it limits career to two roles that he sees as inseparable. The one offered by Sears (1982), which is the definition I have adopted for this book, is based on the concept that a career is a series of paid or unpaid occupations or jobs that a person holds throughout his or her life.

I have also adopted Sears’s (1982) definition of career development: a lifelong process involving psychological, sociological, educational, economic, and physical factors as well as chance factors that interact to influence the career of an individual. However, I would add culture to Sears’s list of factors that influence career development. Leong (1991), Luzzo (1992), and Fitzgerald and Betz (1994) correctly note that the influence of cultural background has not been adequately considered in theories of career development, in research on the process of career development, or in career development practice. Research suggests that important factors exist among cultural groups in areas such as career decision-making attitudes and work values (Leong, 1991; Luzzo, 1992). Given the increasingly multicultural nature of our society, our conceptualizations of career development and our approaches to intervening in the process must take into consideration cultural background.

Career Interventions Defined

A career intervention is a deliberate act aimed at enhancing some aspect of a person’s career development, including influencing the career decision-making process (Spokane, 1991). Many types of career interventions are available, including career guidance, career development programs, career education, career counseling, career information, and career coaching.

The concept of career intervention is a general one that encompasses techniques ranging from career counseling to assessment. In the last decade, a concerted effort has been made by the American Psychological Association (APA), the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP), the ASCA, the Association of Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES), and others to identify researched-based interventions, that is, those interventions that have been proved through rigorous research to make a difference in the lives of clients. In 2003, ACES and ASCA established a National Panel for Evidenced-Based School Counseling to establish a protocol for identifying research-based practices (Carey, Dimmit, Hatch, Lapan, & Whiston, 2008). NASP and APA have established similar committees, but thus far no concerted effort has been made to identify research-based career interventions, except in schools. However, one of the long-term trends in the field of career development seems likely to consist of attempts to use stringent scientific standards to identify the best practices.

Career guidance is a broad construct that, like career intervention, encompasses most of the other strategies listed previously and has been used traditionally as the rubric under which all career development interventions were placed. Often, authors speak of career guidance programs (e.g., Herr & Cramer, 1996), which are organized, systematic efforts designed to influence various aspects of the career development of a client group, such as high school or college students (Herr & Cramer, 1996; Spokane, 1991). Career guidance programs may contain some or all of the following: systematic attempts to dispense career information, activities to enhance self-awareness, career planning classes, career counseling, job placement, and so forth. The term career guidance programs is increasingly being replaced by the term career development programs, but it is still widely used, particularly in referring to the career development efforts of counselors working in public schools.

Career education, a term coined in the 1970s (e.g., Hoyt, 1977), is a systematic attempt to influence the career development of students and adults through various types of educational strategies, including providing occupational information, infusing career-related concepts into the academic curriculum, taking field trips to businesses and industries, having guest speakers who represent various occupations talk about their jobs, offering classes devoted to the study of careers, establishing career internships and apprenticeships, and setting up laboratories that simulate career experiences. Career education programs, like career development programs, are sometimes discussed synonymously with career guidance programs, although the scope of career education programs has typically exceeded the scope of career guidance programs. The term career education, like career guidance, is being rapidly replaced by the term career development programs because of the efforts of the American School Counselor Association (2003, 2008).

Career counseling, as traditionally defined, is a service provided to a single client or a group of clients who come seeking assistance with career choice or career adjustment problems. The process of career counseling involves establishing rapport, assessing the nature of the problem, goal setting, intervention, and termination. The outcomes of career counseling are expected to be some or all of the following: the selection of a career, increased certainty about a career choice that was made prior to the beginning of counseling, enhanced self-understanding, increased understanding of one or more occupations, strategies for making adjustments within the work role, strategies for coordinating the work role with other life roles, and enhanced mental health (Brown & Brooks, 1991).

Savickas (2013, p. 168) lays out his definition of postmodern career counseling or, as he puts it, career construction. Career construction counseling begins by having clients describe the incidents that dislocated them from the current episode of their story, their adaptive resources and readiness, and their goals for a new episode they want to construct with the counselor. The expected outcome of career construction counseling is new identity development and using that new identity to write a new life script and construct a more satisfying life. In a later chapter, I will consider Savickas’s definition in more detail along with those of other postmodern career counselors.

One aspect of career counseling that is receiving increasing attention is the relationship between career and mental health issues. Many leaders in the field (e.g., Betz & Corning, 1993; Krumboltz, 1993) have argued that the two are inseparable, although they admit that, at times, they may occur as independent processes. Today, career counselors in many agencies are attempting to aid veterans who are returning from wars in the Middle East to become meaningfully employed and cope with mental health problems such as depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome (Stein-McCormick, Osborn, Hayden, & Van Hoose, 2013). Others, such as Super (1993), have argued that although career counseling and personal counseling are related they fall on a continuum, with career counseling focusing on the specific and personal counseling on the more general concerns of the individual. Still others (Brown, 1995; Brown & Brooks, 1991) suggest that although counselors may address both personal and career problems simultaneously, in some instances proceeding with career counseling is impossible, because the psychological state (e.g., depression) of the individual precludes some clients from engaging in goal setting and rational approaches to career decision making.

Career information is sometimes referred to as labor market information (LMI), particularly when it involves providing comprehensive information about job trends, the industries in this country, or comprehensive information systems. Career information comes in a variety of formats, including computerized systems, digital recordings, and postings on websites. However, career resource centers increasingly rely on information available on the Internet. For example, the U.S. Department of Labor now places all its major publications online, including the most used piece of occupational information, the Occupational Outlook Handbook; all occupational projections; and the O*NET (the Occupational Information Network). O*NET is the most up-to-date source of information available today and is the basis for all types of occupational information. Thousands of other sources of information are also available on the Internet.

Career coaching, as it has been traditionally defined, is a process used by managers to facilitate the career development of employees (Hall & Associates, 1986). Career coaching efforts help employees identify opportunities that exist within their work settings and prepare for and enter new positions. The motivation that underpins career coaching, according to Hall and his colleagues, develops as a result of company concern for the employee and the desire to help the business identify the talent it needs to be successful.

Recently, career coaching has taken on a meaning that is in many ways akin to career counseling. Bench (2003) suggests that career coaches help clients clarify their values, become aware of the choices available to them, set goals, and move toward meeting those goals. In addition, career coaches may help clients develop management skills, manage transitions, develop job search skills and conduct job searches, or simply become more effective in their current jobs. Bench (2003) envisions career coaching as a private practice enterprise, whereas Hall and his colleagues (1986) perceive career coaching more narrowly as a managerial function that occurs within the confines of the business. In fact, both are correct. Internal career coaching is typically conducted by the employee’s supervisor and aims to help them function more effectively on the job and prepare to move up in the company. Managers may hire external coaches to assist an employee become more effective, and employees may also hire their own career coaches.

Case Study 1: Casey was a new hire in a large electricity generating business. She was outspoken and opinionated, too much so according her manager. He brought in a career coach to help “smooth” some of Casey’s rough edges. The coach not only met with Casey but also observed her in meetings and in her interactions with fellow workers. Using an approach that focused on emotional intelligence, the coach and Casey worked on listening, monitoring her anger, and changing her responses in terms of timing and tenor. Casey’s performance ratings went up as a result. The coach also helped Casey deal with her manager’s sarcasm. This entire case will be presented in Chapter 18 Career Development in Business.

Organizations and Publications

As noted earlier in this chapter, the National Career Development Association, a division of the American Counseling Association, was founded in 1913 as the National Vocational Guidance Association. It publishes the Career Development Quarterly. Career counselors, school counselors, counseling psychologists, and other professionals who are interested in the career development process often affiliate with this division. Counseling psychologists, along with career counselors, have historically provided leadership for the career development movement. They typically belong to Division 17, Counseling Psychology, of the American Psychological Association. That division publishes the Journal of Counseling Psychology, which features a wide array of articles but typically has a section devoted to career development. The editorial board of the Journal of Vocational Behavior, a journal not affiliated with a professional organization, has traditionally been dominated by counseling psychologists. Another journal that focuses on career development and is not affiliated with a professional organization is the Journal of Career Development. Finally, the Association of Training and Development (ASTD) has a special interest group that focuses primarily on career development within business and industry.

Why Work Is Important—or Not

There are more than 330 million people in the United States. Work is not important to all of them, which is partially attested to by the size of the labor force; 132 million people. Estimates vary widely, but there is also a large, undocumented labor force that may be as large as 12 million workers. The focus of this book is largely on people, documented or undocumented, who are working or wish to work in a defined occupation, usually for some type of tangible reward.

Some people conclude that they do not want to work because there are no jobs in their community or because getting a job would require retraining. Others become discouraged because high unemployment makes it difficult to secure the type of job they desire; they stop looking. However, in August 2013 the Bureau of Labor Statistics (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013a, 2013c) reported that there were 3.9 million job openings in the United States, but, as is always the case, there was a mismatch between the characteristics and skills of job seekers and the skills and aptitudes required to perform the available jobs. As noted previously, many people who are out of work will not move to places such as North Dakota or Texas, two states that had many job openings in 2013. Today, there seem to be labor shortages in jobs that require high levels of technological knowledge and skill and thus require retraining for most people who are out of work. There are also employment opportunities in the service area, many of which pay minimum wage and offer no benefits. People who are receiving unemployment benefits or who have accessed the benefits offered by the social welfare system may find these jobs unattractive and may decide to remain unemployed.

Work Structures Your Life.

How? The average work week for a full-time employee is between 35 and 40 hours. The amount of time it takes to commute to work, which should be added to total work time, varies. Thirteen million members, or 9.4 percent of the workforce, spend at least one day working from home, up from 9.2 percent in 2010 (Shah, 2013). Telecommuting reduces the time spent in work-related activities and the expense of commuting. Employers benefit via reduced cost of office space and equipment. People who are employed on New York’s Wall Street or in downtown Los Angeles may, and often do, commute for more than two hours to get to and from work. Workers spend from 33 to 40 percent of their 24-hour work days working. The percentage of waking hours spent working and performing related activities may rise to 50 percent or probably more for long-distance commuters. It is not unusual for retired workers and workers who have lost their jobs to suffer because they have “time on their hands.” One result is that they return to work.

Work Pays the Bills.

Unless you are retired with a steady income, were born rich, or have won the lottery, you are always entertaining two questions: How much money do I need, and how much money do I want? Needs include food, shelter, transportation to work, health care, and opportunities for rest and regeneration. The question becomes a bit different for people who participate in many government assistance programs. People who retired at 62 and draw social security, ex-workers on social security disability, and people receiving food stamps and other forms of public assistance are told how much they can make and what the penalty is for going over the government-set earnings limit.

The federal government indicates that a family of four earning less than $23,050 is in poverty and presumably cannot meet its needs without assistance. In order to attain this income level, a full-time worker must earn more than 10 dollars per hour or work more than 40 hours per week. At a minimum, your job should meet your needs no matter where you live. If an individual or family cannot earn enough to pay for essentials, public assistance should be sought. Career counselors working with the unemployed, the underemployed, or the working poor may find themselves in the role of helping their clients seek public assistance.

Many people who seek assistance in career planning want to earn more, sometimes much more, than the amount required to meet their needs. Wants involve the same issues as needs, that is, food, housing, transportation, communication, leisure, and health care. In 2012, the income of the average family in the United States was about $43,000. The average family in Mississippi had the lowest income, $33,000, Connecticut the highest of the states, $59,000, and families in the District of Columbia had the highest overall average, $75,000 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). Often, the final choice of work involves a variety of compromises around geographic location, working conditions, security issues, and earnings, but sooner or later earnings becomes an issue.

Work, Money, and Discrimination:

Technically, discrimination in the workplace occurs when two people of different genders, race, ethnicity, or sexual preference do the same job at the same level of competency and one is paid more than the other. Does discrimination occur? My daughter was employed in one of the major accounting firms. She learned that newly graduated male MBAs were paid at a significantly greater level than she was after two years in the firm. What’s more, her training to do the job was demonstrably better than that of the new hires. She went directly to her boss and made her case. I’m sure her argument was persuasive, but the threat of a discrimination suit probably was as responsible for her $20,000 raise as was her argument.

It is practically impossible to systematically examine the earnings gap between men and women regardless of the business or industry study, and conclude anything other than men earn more than women, usually about 20 percent more (Adams, 2013). Later in this book, I will take a closer look at this disparity, but people like Carrie Lukas (2012), who writes for the Forbes online magazine, suggest that we need to examine the problem in greater depth than is typically done by organizations with a bias. Later, I will look at issues such as discrimination, tenure, education, child bearing, and other variables and findings that men spend a bit more time each day working (Lukas, 2012) than women. Biological issues that contribute to the pay gap will also be addressed.

Ethnicity, Race, and Earnings.

The U.S. Census Bureau (2012) reported that the median income for families of various ethnic groups were as follows: Asian American households, $65,469; white households, $51,861; Hispanic households, $38,039; and African American households, $32,584. It is worth noting that the number of people within the households was not controlled and thus may vary considerably.

Household income is the amount of money earned by wage earners older than 15 living in the household. Using household income to compare ethnic groups may be misleading, because 60 percent of black families are headed by one person and thus have one breadwinner. However, it is an undeniable fact that minority workers make less money than most other workers on average. Some of this disparity can be attributed to differences in educational achievement, but historical criticism is also a major factor that has led to the current situation.

Work Provides Status and Social Opportunities.

The workplace is a major source of friendships. Work may also provide opportunities for leisure in the form of intramural teams, after-work stops at the neighborhood watering hole, and informal activities.

In 2011, Friedman and Martin published the results of a longitudinal study of 1,528 gifted students that began in the 1920s. They reported that a number of factors were related to longevity, including a life filled with hard work. Specifically, people who worked hard and advanced in their careers lived longer. What about those people who wish to shift their lifestyle and become more responsible, conscientious workers? Is it too late for them? No. The authors of the study also reported that people who shifted their attitude toward work and became hard-working, responsible workers also lived longer. However, the evidence supporting the relationship between hard work and longevity is equivocal. Cardiologists have long understood that stress, including work-related stress, is associated with various types of heart disease.

Historical and Religious Meanings of Work.

Historically, work has held religious and theological meaning. In early Hebrew writings, work was viewed as punishment, perhaps because Adam and Eve were ejected from the idyllic Garden of Eden as described in the Bible and condemned to lives of work. Some early Christians were offended by work for profit, but this view was reversed by the Middle Ages. During the Reformation, which began in the sixteenth century, work was considered the best way to serve God. Martin Luther and John Calvin viewed work positively, and it seems that their attitudes about work combined with social Darwinism and laissez-faire liberalism, which values an economy unfettered by government regulation, individual freedom and responsibility, and the rule of law, came together to form the foundation of what is now called the Judeo-Protestant work ethic (PWE) and the idea that working hard and diligently is important.

Peterson and Gonzalez (2005) argue that the PWE is not only outdated but also the root of many of the ills in our society. They suggest that the PWE is the basis for anti-Semitism and for blaming the poor and disenfranchised and suggesting that their plight exists because they do not exert enough effort to improve themselves. They suggest that this blame-the-victim approach is deliberately and politically motivated as a means to justify oppressions and abuse in the workplace. They also suggest that the PWE has limited multicultural applicability, is antiwomen, omits the debt that our culture has to our non-Judeo-Christian ancestors, and cannot be readily applied to the immigrant population. Arguably, the Confucianism work ethic (CWE) emphasis on education, self-discipline, and loyalty that can be found throughout Asian culture mirrors the concept of the PWE as it is thought of in this country.

Domurat and Zajenkowska (2012) do not disagree that the PWE and Confucian work ethic (CWE) have been used as the basis for oppression of the masses and women in particular. However, they argue and present evidence to support their case that the presence of CWE and PWE have fueled economic growth in the United States, Western Europe, and many Asian countries. With regard to the application of the PWE to immigrants, it seems likely that adult immigrants bring their work ethic with them and that it will be maintained by the cultural (perhaps subcultural) context in which they find themselves.

Is the PWE responsible for the ills identified by Peterson and Gonzalez? In one instance, they need to check their facts. They begin their discussion of anti-Semitism with Martin Luther (in the sixteenth century), when in fact anti-Semitism was widespread much earlier, probably as early as the first century, when Christians separated themselves from Judaism. My point is that anti-Semitism had nothing to do with the PWE. I agree that the PWE needs to be supplemented with perspectives from other cultures. However, to push their point about the evils of the PWE Peterson and Gonzalez contend that European Americans hold up Asians as model minorities, not to praise Asians but to support the belief that other minorities are underachieving and thus not working hard enough to achieve success. Democratic governments and the application of the PWE and CWE have produced economic growth unparalleled in the history of the world (Domurat & Zajenkowska, 2012). However, the exception to the democracy plus work ethic formula for success is China. After the Soviet Union failed, the leadership of China opened the way to entrepreneurship, which arguably freed the population to act on their CWE and in turn produced the fasteset growing economy in the twenty-first century.

Using Our Wealth.

I am not in favor of abandoning the PWE or the CWE. I am in favor of using the wealth produced in this country to assist the needy and widen the opportunity structure for the poor and disenfranchised. Better usage of wealth in other countries has typically come in the form of the adoption of socialist institutions such as single-payer health care systems in countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada, K to Graduate School tax payer–funded educational programs in France and Australia, and subsidized housing in the United Kingdom and to a lesser extent in the United States. Communism, which is the ultimate wealth-redistribution system of government, failed in Russia and China and limps along in Cuba. Modern China is in a sense a mixed model: strong central government plus an entrepreneurial economy.

Finally, Peterson and Gonzalez’s argument that the PWE is patriarchal and thus antifeminist is probably accurate, but that is changing. In 2013, 37 percent of the households in which there were two wage earners, women earned more than men (Wang, Parker & Taylor, 2013). However, their view that it currently sponsors an antiwomen ethic depends entirely on your concept of the role of women in our society. Some radical feminists have decried the role of woman as mother and caregiver because it is a traditional role that can, in fact, be linked to the thousands of years old Judeo-Protestant ideas about the role of women in society. Many women have rejected feminism for this reason. Career counselors will undoubtedly deal with women caught between tradition and adopting the role of independent worker. These women need to be empowered to create their own life path. It is probably more accurate to indicate that the position of most religious groups in the United States on the role of women in our society is reflected by paraphrasing a popular bumper sticker: The role of women is in the house—and the Senate.

Self-Esteem.

A psychological bi-product of work is the development of self-esteem. People feel a sense of mastery in dealing with objects of work, and their self-esteem is enhanced because they are engaging in activities that produce something that other people value. Unemployed people often suffer low self-esteem, because they believe they cannot produce something other people value (Goldsmith & Diette, 2012).

Career Development in the Global Economy

The dissolution of the Soviet Union occurred formally in December, 1991. The formation of the global economy began long before 1991, but the opening of a number of independent states that had made up the Soviet Union accelerated the process. In 2005, Friedman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times, declared in his book about the global economy that the world is flat. His book was not an attempt to turn the clock back to pre-Columbian times, when it was widely believed that sailing ships that ventured too far out to sea would fall off the end of the flat earth to their destruction. Rather, it was Friedman’s attempt to explain how the economy, once made up largely of discrete local economies, had merged into a global economy. Earlier, Joseph Stiglitz (2003), a Nobel Prize winner in economics who acknowledged that globalization of the world’s economies was in full swing, defended the impact of the global economy against what he termed its discontents and laid out some of the problems with the economic changes that were occurring and are likely to continue to occur regardless of the barriers that politicians and others erect to protect local economies. The bottom line for both Stiglitz and Friedman is that the global economy is a reality, and, for better and sometimes for worse, it is here to stay.

Today, few scholars or knowledgeable lay people need proof of the existence of the global economy. The interconnectedness of the major economies of the world is a reality as is the economic recession that began in 2008 and continues to some degree at this time in the form of high unemployment, lower earning, and nearly a million discouraged workers (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2013e). In January 2008, the unemployment rate in the United States stood at 4.9 percent. It grew to over 10 percent as banks failed, mortgages went unpaid, and credit card debt spiraled upward. It now stands at approximately 7.0 percent. Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates were as follows: adult women (6.5 percent), African Americans (12.6 percent), adult men (7.0 percent), teenagers (23.7 percent), whites (6.6 percent), and Hispanics (9.4 percent).

As would be expected, the economic downturn in this country impacted other economies. However, as the U.S. economy has recovered the economies of other countries have also improved. In mid-2013, the unemployment rate in the European Union according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS; 2013d) stood at a collective 10.9 percent. Greece’s rate was nearly 27 percent. Other EU countries had substantially lower unemployment rates. Austria and Denmark fared the best with 4.6 percent and 6.8 percent, respectively. Russia’s economy, which is closely tied to the price of petroleum, had fared a bit better than the average EU country in that its unemployment rate stood at about 5.4 percent (Trading Economics, 2013a). Nevertheless, if the demand for and thus the price of oil continues to decline, it is expected that the unemployment rate in Russia might rise dramatically. Reports from China, which has the world’s most carefully managed economy and is the major exporter of goods to the United States, indicate that the urban unemployment in 2013 stood at 4.1 percent (Trading Economics, 2013b). The latest available data form Japan, another major U.S. trading partner, places its unemployment rate at 3.9 percent (Trading Economics, 2013a).

The global economy has given us new vocabulary and a new reality about the labor market. Words and phrases such as offshoring, workforce restructuring, outsourcing, insourcing, home sourcing, in-forming, and of course all of the words, phrases, and ideas associated with the Internet have been incorporated into our day-to-day conversations. Words such as offshoring and outsourcing in particular make it clear that jobs that once were protected by a country’s borders, and in some instances by protective tariffs, are now offered on a competitive basis to workers around the world.

Placing jobs and entire industries offshore—that is, in other countries—was initiated decades ago by business leaders in industries such as textiles, furniture, and steel. They saw this as a way to increase profits because of lower wages and fewer government regulations and environmental protection requirements in those countries. Labor cost differences have received the greatest attention and blame for offshoring and outsourcing, perhaps because data regarding the relative labor costs in the United States and other countries are readily available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2012). In 2011, the average comparative compensation (wages plus fringe benefits) costs for U.S. production workers was $35.53. Several countries had higher costs, including Germany, Australia, and many European countries. Spain, Portugal, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Greece were the exceptions. Most Asian countries for which data were available had labor costs that were lower than the United States, some dramatically lower. The Philippines ($2.01), Taiwan ($9.53), Republic of Korea ($18.91), and Japan ($35.71) are examples (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012). Data about wages in China and Russia may be harder to collect, and that is perhaps the reason they are not included in the Bureau of Labor statistical database. However, a 2005 report estimated that the average net monthly wages for Chinese manufacturing workers was $134 (World Salaries, 2005) but wages are rising in China (Trading Economics, 2013b). It is also worth noting that the average work week for the workers in China is six days long.

As mentioned earlier, the most frequently cited basis for outsourcing is the differential between U.S. wages and those in other countries. Wage differential is also one of the reasons for insourcing—the placement of jobs in the United States by businesses in other countries. Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, Honda, Mercedes Benz, Nissan, BMW, and other auto manufacturers now assemble many of their cars in the United States, primarily but not exclusively in “right-to-work” states, such as Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee, that prohibit the establishment of “closed shops”—unionized labor forces that preclude workers from employment in a workplace unless they join the union. Another reason that foreign businesses place a part of their operation in the United States is the size of the U.S. market. Since World War II, the United States has been the world’s largest economy, and its citizens, relative to people in many other countries, generally have a great deal of money at their disposal once necessities such as food and housing are accounted for. Although it is assumed by many that the U.S. economy is losing the outsourcing–insourcing battle for jobs, accurate statistics are difficult to find. What can be assumed is that in the flattened world described by Friedman (2005) U.S. workers will increasingly find themselves looking for jobs outside of this country, and they need to prepare for that eventuality.

What Factors Led to Globalization?

Friedman (2005) identified a number of economic “flatteners,” including the aforementioned fall of the Soviet Union that opened up the economies of Eastern Europe. He also listed the Internet, which first came into commercial use in the United States in the 1990s. Friedman points out that almost as quickly as the Internet became a commercial force a digital divide developed between richer and poorer countries.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the development of the European Union, and U.S. and Chinese trade agreements are all factors that are aimed at increasing economic productivity by easing the flow of goods and services among countries and reducing the cost of products sold at home. The emergence of NAFTA revealed that a new occupational classification system was needed in order to compare the economic relationships among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) was developed jointly by the U.S. Economic Classification Policy Committee (ECPC), Statistics Canada, and Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografia. This system provides the three countries with a basis for collecting comparative economic data and thus monitoring the impact of NAFTA.

Student Learning Exercise 1.1

Fill in the blanks in the following statement:1. Friedman (2005) seems to think that the primary “flatteners” of the world’s economy were (1) __________ ; (2) __________ ; and (3) __________. Brown (the author of this book) believes that Friedman may have overlooked a very important factor in his list, which is __________.

The Unflattened Worker and Social Justice

There are literally dozens of definitions of social justice. In the simplest terms, it is the belief or philosophy that all persons, regardless of ethnic origin, gender, social status, race, or religion, are to be treated equally. It assumes that each of us has the personal responsibility to work with others to improve our institutions as tools to empower personal development, promote economic equality, and ensure social fairness. Has social justice been advanced by the global economy?

The fact is that many of us have been the beneficiaries of globalization because of the access to global markets that can produce goods and services at costs less than they can be produced in the United States. However, manufacturing workers in the United States cannot be counted as beneficiaries of the global economy for the most part. Further, Stiglitz (2003) suggests that the African, Asian, and South American poor cannot be listed among those who have been helped by globalization and suggests that globalization may have exacerbated their plight in some instances. It has certainly been the case that some of the developed countries have exploited workers in poorer countries and added to the pollution of the environment as well.

Friedman (2005) offers some additional ideas when he discusses why the flattening process has bypassed millions. In order for the workers in a country to be advantaged by the opportunities presented by the global economy, people need to have governments that provide an infrastructure that includes education, health care, and a social network that helps them weather personal disasters, such as loss of jobs. Most of the countries in the world cannot boast of this type of infrastructure.

Social Justice in the United States

In his famous “I have a dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned the United States as a place that would be free from racism and discrimination and where there would be equal opportunity for all. Civil rights legislation has brought about many of the changes he envisioned, but certain aspects of the society he hoped would develop are missing, including economic equity.

However, improving education and eliminating the digital divide remain as major barriers to social justice. Nearly 30 percent of students leave school before graduation. Because many of these early leavers return to school, complete a diploma program at a community college, or pass an equivalency exam, the exact dropout rate is difficult to ascertain. We do know, based on the results of international educational assessment programs, that U.S. students do not stack up well when compared to students in other countries. The results of the 2009 assessment of 15-year-olds found that U.S. students placed fifteenth in math, thirteenth in science, and seventh in reading proficiency when compared to the students in 63 other countries (NCES, 2012). Traditionally, Hispanic and African American Students have fared worse than white and Asian American students on these measures. These results are by no means disastrous, but they are not high enough to sustain our leadership in an increasingly technological world.

Social justice cannot be fully realized unless people have meaningful jobs. Roberts, Povich, and Maher (2012–2013) repeatedly make the point that education and skills training are the keys to ending poverty for many individuals and families. Because many career development specialists work in educational institutions, they have a unique opportunity to influence the programs and policies in these institutions that help or hurt the poor. It is not enough to have legislation that precludes discrimination in the workplace when the opportunity to prepare for and enter those jobs is missing. However, wage differentials between men and women and white and minority workers illustrates clearly that economic equity is an unrealized dream, albeit for a multitude of reasons.

Macartney, Bishaw, and Fontenot (2013) reported the results of the 2007 to 2011 American Community Survey (ACS) for the Bureau of the Census. Among other things, this survey details poverty rates in the United States. Their report contains the following information: 42.7 million or 15.1 percent of Americans had incomes below the poverty level; the percentage of white people earning below the poverty line was 9.9; and the percentages for African Americans, people of Hispanic origin, Asian Americans, and American Indians and Alaska Natives were approximately 25, 22, 12, and 28, respectively. The report also revealed that half of the 23.1 million men and women with a disability were not employed in May 2012. In another report, Roberts, Povich, and Maher (2012–2013) illustrate that working alone will not cure poverty. They report that many working families, probably as many as 104 million families or 47.5 million people, may not have enough money to meet their needs for food, shelter, medical care, and other essentials.

Is a New Model for Career Development Practice Needed?

As a future practitioner, you must decide, what model will I practice? What techniques will I use? How can I be an effective tool in the lives of my clients? Some people are unhappy with the models used in the past that are rooted in the European philosophy of people like René Descartes, who famously said, “I think, therefore I am.” His idea largely ignores the interaction between the person and his or her context. Postmodern counselors and psychologists would argue that Descartes was more accurately thinking about thinking that built on thinking and thus built a recursive loop. It is important to note that the importance of the mind as the source of existence is not solely a Western cultural idea. Buddha supposedly said, “The mind is everything. You will become what you think.” The topic of your personal model will be addressed more fully in Chapter 3, but your thinking about this matter should already have begun.

Blustein, McWhirter, and Perry (2005), Peterson and Gonzalez (2005), Savickas (2013), and many others have indicated a need for the redefinition and overall reconceptualization of the theory and practice of career development. Peterson and Gonzalez assert that the underlying traditional assumptions of career development are faulty; they suggest that linear logic, the concept of objective truth, and emphasis on the need for empirical proof for career development practices be replaced with recursive thinking, relativism, and the subjectivity of postmodernism. Recursion is a concept taken from a variety of sources, including philosophy, linguistics, mathematics, and psychology. It is a process by which the mind builds processes and structures that draw upon the latest thought. Recursive questioning is used to identify embedded themes and metaphors that the individual uses to describe him- or herself in the various aspects of his or her life. Traditionalists use the interview to gather factual information and may try to identify thoughts independent of context.

Blustein and colleagues (2005) concur with Peterson and Gonzalez; they agree that a new conceptual base is needed for career development, but, drawing on the work of Prilleltensky (1997), they come to a different conclusion regarding the new paradigm. Prilleltensky criticized the traditional approach as being a value-free model that embraces individualism and meritocracy, which is a self-contradictory statement. Individualism and belief in meritocracy are values. At the heart of Prilleltensky’s ideas is the belief that goal-oriented change is possible; that is, people can choose to better themselves and, as a result, do so. These concepts are not in conflict with the traditional model. The assertion has been that apologists for the traditional model have paid little attention to the factors that led to the oppression, discrimination, and marginalization of millions of people. Also, traditionalists have not addressed the inequitable distribution of power and money in U.S. society, according to their critics. It is probably accurate that historically the implementation of the traditional model of career development has focused on the individual in an apolitical fashion and largely ignored issues such as racism, sexism, and political and economic disenfranchisement. These vestiges of an outdated belief system need to be eliminated. Blustein and colleagues suggest that emphasis on meritocracy and free enterprise are misguided, because the race for social attainment starts at different places for the poor, some racial and ethnic groups, and people with disabilities. This accusation is both off base and unfair to the groups mentioned. Can the poor, members of racial and ethnic minorities, and people with disabilities perform meritoriously? Of course they can, but we must do more in a number of areas to make sure they have the opportunity to do so.

Empowerment is another alternative to the traditional approach. Prilleltensky (1997) identifies the empowerment model, as it is defined in feminist therapy, as the second candidate to underpin psychological practice, or, in our case, career development. This model is aimed at equalizing power and subscribes to a distributive philosophy that suggests that all people should have somewhat equal access to the benefits of society. Equalizing power may occur through a variety of processes, including individual action, lawsuits, political action, collective bargaining, economic boycotts, and wealth redistribution.

Wealth redistribution via taxation and government-run social programs is an often debated idea, sometimes contentiously. However, a close examination of wealth redistribution in the United States suggests that there are already redistribution efforts in place. Social security, Medicare, the Affordable Healthcare Act, Medicaid, and food stamp programs are tax payer subsidized. The question is not should we share wealth, but how much should the “haves” be required to give to the less fortunate. Currently, top wage earners living in states such as Hawaii, California, and New York pay more than 50 percent of their earnings in federal and state income tax, whereas citizens in Texas, Florida, and five other states pay no state income taxes. According to Bleeker (2013), the tax rate in the United States, when compared to other countries, ranks 53rd for workers who earn $300,000, whereas Denmark, Italy, France, Greece, and Belgium rank in the top five. In general, Western European countries have more generous social welfare programs than the United States.

Like Peterson and Gonzalez (2005), Prilleltensky identifies postmodernism as a third alternative to underpin psychological practice. However, he dismisses it, apparently because of its relativism on the issue of values. Blustein et al. (2005) endorsed what is termed emancipatory communitarianism. This approach also espouses the belief that the focus of practice should be on both individuals and the systems in which they function, which is in line with postmodern thinking. Professionals who adopt emancipatory communitarianism endorse the values of social justice, value human diversity, subscribe to establishing mutual goals, engage in political action to correct inequities in the systems that impact students and workers, and orient themselves both to their clients and to nonclients who are discriminated against or marginalized by the educational and economic systems in the United States. Clearly, Prilleltensky and, by default, Blustein and his colleagues are espousing a concept of social justice that goes beyond legally ensuring human rights to one that advocates a fairer division of the wealth, resources, and power in U.S. society. The statistics quoted in previous sections regarding employment, wages, and poverty seem to support the assumption by Blustein and colleagues (2005) that suggests that the current historical models of career development have not provided a basis for addressing the social ills of many of our client groups. Most career development models, including the ubiquitous Holland (1997) theory, focus on providing one-to-one assistance to client groups. Not one of the extant models provides a basis for addressing the vocational and economic problems that have been identified thus far. Blustein and colleagues recommend that the values from emancipatory communitarianism (Prilleltensky, 1997) be incorporated into existing theory, which, as will be shown in Chapter 3, raises a number of conceptual issues. However, helping clients overcome the barriers to career choice and aiding in the implementation of those choices is a core belief of most career development practitioners.

Practice has almost always outstripped theory in the career development arena, and practitioners need not wait for theorists to provide models to move ahead. Career development practitioners can borrow from community psychology, organizational development theory, change theory and practice, and the emerging literature dealing with collaboration in the change process (Brown, Pryzwansky, & Schulte, 2011). In fact, additional theory building may not be needed at all if career development specialists broaden their horizons and adopt theory and practices from other fields. The skills needed by all career counselors include the traditional skills of individual and small-group career counseling; career coaching; career and educational planning and assessment; job placement; design and delivery of psychoeducational learning experiences; and design and implementation of transitional experiences for a wide array of clients, such as students requiring special education, adults with disabilities, veterans, and adults who have been displaced. The skills needed by career development practitioners who wish to address some of the social injustices in U.S. society include consultation, collaboration, systemic assessment, program design, leadership, and advocacy. In addition, career development practitioners must be fully knowledgeable about legislative initiatives, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Ticket to Work and Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1990, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Adopting a social justice agenda based on a collective social value is not without problems. Individualism is one of the core values of U.S. society (Brown, 2002), and it is difficult for many people in the United States to forgo the idea that honesty and individual effort are the prime ingredients for success in the workforce. Sociologists have long realized the relationship between parental status and occupational attainment (Hotchkiss & Borow, 1996). The status attainment model first articulated by Blau and Duncan (1967) and expanded by Sewell, Haller, and Portes (1969) suggests that family status and certain cognitive variables, such as intelligence and attitudes about education and occupations, is transmitted through the family, influencing educational attainment, the level of occupation attained, and, ultimately, earnings. Consider the following pairs of people:

· Two high school students, both of whom are white, are of equal intelligence. Student 1 comes from a family in which both parents completed college and have a combined income of $88,000; student 2’s parents graduated from high school and went directly to work. No other family members attended college. Student 2’s family income is at the median income level for white families, which is approximately $54,000.

· Two high school students are of equal intelligence. Student 1 is white and lives with his divorced mother. His father stopped paying child support several years ago, and his mother makes $10.00 per hour in the local textile plant, which is expected to close within the next six months. Student 2 is also white, but both of her parents have stable jobs assembling computers for a leading computer manufacturer. Their combined earnings exceed $30 per hour.

· An African American student and a white student both attend the same college. The African American student attended a substandard high school, whereas the white student attended a well-regarded public school in the suburbs. The African American student obtained a generous scholarship but will still have to work 15 hours per week to support himself, whereas the white student’s parents are underwriting the entire expense for their son’s college education. Both students want to attend law school after completing their Bachelor of Arts degrees.

· Two African American high school students with excellent grades want to go to medical school. Because of their financial situations, both students will attend in-state, public universities. Both are admitted to Prestigious University (PU), but because her father was discriminated against when he attended PU student 1 elects to attend a decidedly inferior university.

Although the emphasis of this book will be on the importance of getting a job, hopefully the information presented earlier that highlighted the plight of the working poor dispelled the myth that escaping from poverty is as easy as getting a job. Jobs may be full-time or part-time and minimum wage or something higher. It is entirely possible to have a job or perhaps more than one full-time job and be among the working poor, depending on the number of family members, the cost of housing, and a variety of other factors (Roberts, Povich, & Maher, 2012–2013). People are classified as working poor if they spend at least 27 weeks working per year and are living below the poverty level.

The Future of Work

Projections about work, particularly those set forth by the BLS in its publication titled Occupational Outlook Quarterly and Handbook, will be addressed in detail in the final chapter of this book. Futurists such as Toffler (1980), Johnston and Parker (1987), and Naisbit and Aburdene (1990) have correctly predicted many of the changes that have occurred in the labor force, although they have often failed to gauge the magnitude of the recent shifts due to globalization. Most futurists anticipated the importance of the computer in the workplace. For example, as noted earlier predictions about the decentralization of the workplace were on target. Many major airlines, such as Delta, have outsourced many of their reservation agent jobs to other countries, but electronically communicating about x-rays with radiologists in other countries, going abroad for medical treatment, and offshoring software development to places such as Ireland and India evaded the projections of all but the most astute career futurists. The displacement of clerical workers in all industries by “smart” software that “learns” to interpret the voices of a user and type the messages was missed by many futurists.

In this same vein, most futurists who studied the workplace expected that technology would decrease employment opportunities in some areas and would increase opportunities in others. Not surprisingly, given the use of computers in all phases of education, health care, business, and elsewhere, the demand for people who can create software that educates, monitors, and entertains is at an all-time high. Systems analysts who can design computer systems that increase efficiency and productivity are also in demand. Construction companies need specialists who can install fiber-optic cable to connect computers and telephones; technological equipment repairers are in demand; and knowledgeable salespeople who can explain the potential of various types of technological innovations are needed.

The rapid impact of the Internet on the dissemination of information and as a social networking and sales tool has surprised all but the savviest prognosticators. Webmasters, the people who design and maintain websites on the Internet, are in demand. Salespeople with specialized skills needed to market products on the Internet are also in demand, along with people who can create software and hardware that take advantage of the Internet’s potential. Finally, all experts agree that technology will continue to change the face of the workplace throughout the twenty-first century by eliminating and creating jobs, by changing the physical nature of the workplace, and by creating new tools for workers to use.

The shifts in the population makeup of this country will also have a significant impact on the workplace. Currently, approximately 3.5 in 10 workers in the United States are nonwhite. At some point during the first half of the twenty-first century, nonwhites will make up a majority of workers. This may be why the U.S. Department of Labor noted in the Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS Skills, 1991) that one of the skills needed by future workers is the ability to function in a multicultural workplace. Although the trend in the past has been toward earlier retirement, changes in Social Security that increase the age at which payments may be received and improved health care may reverse this trend, with the result that older workers will work longer. Regardless of the impact of Social Security and longevity, it is likely that the average age of workers will increase in the short term because of the sheer number of workers in the cohort who are now in their 50s and 60s, known as “baby boomers.”

Because one’s occupation generally determines where and how one lives, the community activities and organizations in which one participates, and many other aspects of life, social status has long been associated with one’s job. It is difficult to predict whether this relationship will become more or less intense. If, as some writers predict, technological change results in a small group of highly trained technical experts and a great mass of low-skilled workers who work infrequently at uninteresting and unrewarding positions, then it is likely that social status will become detached from occupation and shift to some other basis. However, if technological change produces a general upgrading of most workers and provides most people with an opportunity to participate in activities that not only appear to be worthwhile but also are challenging and satisfying, then social status may become even more closely related to one’s job.

Although the discussion about the sources and extent of global warming continue to rage, the search for alternatives to fossil fuel is in full swing and will have a tremendous impact on the nature of the workplace. Hydrogen-powered automobiles, wind-driven turbines that generate electricity, and solar-powered energy cells are but a few of the ideas that have companies and governments engaging in a competitive frenzy for leadership. Change is in the offing, but work is here to stay for most people.

The Goals of This Book

Career development interventions are erroneously considered to be less interesting and certainly less potent than the work associated with personal counseling or psychotherapy. This line of reasoning also projects the idea that career interventions are in some ways simpler to understand and easier to apply than other approaches. One of the goals of this book is to demonstrate that these beliefs do not reflect reality. Psychotherapy puts people back on the road of life. Career development interventions advance them down that road toward self-fulfillment, dignity, social equity, and self-esteem. Modern career development interventions are no longer based on simplistic “test ’em and tell ’em” models, although assessment plays a key role in many career interventions. Career development interventions at one time could be classified as aligned solely with modern philosophy, but today many practitioners have embraced postmodern philosophy and interventions.

The major purpose of this book is to provide a foundation for practitioners who are interested in facilitating the career development process of children, adolescents, and adults and all that this entails. In many instances, fostering career development involves providing experiences that increase self-awareness, the influence of the context in which one functions, and knowledge of occupations. However, to be successful in finding and succeeding in a career, much more than knowledge of self and careers is required. Successful workers are motivated decision makers and are sensitive to individual differences that other workers bring to the workplace. They have highly honed the job-finding process and bring skills to the workplace that can add to productivity. Successful workers are also aware of the relationships among education, training, and job success; they engage in lifelong learning. Practitioners who hope to assist clients to take advantage of the opportunities presented to them by the occupational structure also need a wide variety of skills and knowledge, including understanding the theoretical foundations that underpin career development practice and the skills needed to select and use assessment devices with a wide variety of groups. They also need culturally sensitive career counseling, advocacy, and consultation skills and the ability to locate and use educational and career information. Each of these areas and others are addressed in this book.

Summary

Career development professionals face tremendous challenges as well as the opportunity to assist millions of students and workers in the twenty-first century. The biggest challenges lie in the area of helping disenfranchised and marginalized workers to gain meaningful employment in the modern workplace and to get a fair share of the economic benefits available in the economy. Just as it did at the turn of the twentieth century, the effort to help these workers today often must begin with the educational process. However, all workers must begin to see themselves as members of a global workforce and understand how their occupations may be enriched or endangered by competition from workers throughout the world.

Chapter QuizT 

T F  1. Economists believe that the progress toward the establishment of a global economy is for the most part irreversible.

T  F  2. One of the major factors in the “flattening” of the earth according to Friedman was the failure of the economy of the former Soviet Union.

T  F  3. There is widespread agreement regarding the meaning of career.

T  F  4. Blustein suggests that we replace current models of career development in favor of one that emphasizes social justice.

T  F  5. African Americans account for just over 50 percent of the working poor in this country.

T  F  6. It seems likely that the number of discouraged workers who have stopped hunting for a job plus the underemployed is larger than the number of unemployed.

T  F  7. The saying, “When the United States sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold” refers to the fact that an economic downturn in the United States produces higher rates of unemployment with our trading partners than it does at home.

T  F  8. In 2009, it was entirely possible that the need for career development services was at its highest level since the Great Depression.

T  F  9. Job, occupation, and career are synonymous terms.

T  F  10. The concerns of the pioneers of vocational development were focused primarily on immigrants and young people.

(1) T(2) T(3) F(4) T(5) F(6) T(7) F(8) T(9) T(10) T

References