Career Choice

Microenvironment

Of the three elements said to compose an individual's microenvironment, parental socioeconomic status (SES) is likely to have the strongest correlation with educational attainment and career destination: In the United States, children from homes with low SES are more than 3 times as likely not to complete high school, 20 times as likely not to graduate from college, and 4 times as likely to be unemployed as peers from more affluent backgrounds (Levine & Nidiffer, 1996). Those who have had greater success at school and/or in higher education and who have higher levels of social skills and experience will increase the opportunities available to them and will have a greater chance of making a successful transition to work because they will have more to offer potential employers in the way of human and social capital.

Macroenvironment

The level of economic development underpinning the context within which a career choice is made plays a major determining role in the type of work available and, as such, will strongly affect an individual's structure of opportunity. Using Fourastie's (1949) theory of economic sector development, in premodern societies, the economy revolves around the primary sector (agriculture, mining, etc.). As societies develop and modernize, the primary sector declines and the secondary (production) sector increases. With increased modernization, the primary sector declines further, the importance of the secondary sector begins to wane, and that of the tertiary (service) sector increases. Such economic developments play a fundamental role in the nature, type, and location of work within a society. For example, growth in the United States production sector at the turn of the 19th century led to increased mechanization and to the bureaucratization of work. This, in turn, created opportunities for more women to enter the workforce through increased demand for capable but lower-paid workers, within both production and the developing service sector. The increased availability of women workers, in turn, enabled the expansion of the service sector, thus creating yet more work opportunities, especially for women (Reskin & Roos, 1990).

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