Aspiration-Job Match: Age Trends in a Large Nationally-Representative Sample of Young White Men.

In order to learn how people may alter or reconcile their aspirations and jobs during their career development, this study examined the match between vocational aspirations and actual jobs of white young men and older men. Age trends in the match between vocational aspirations and actual jobs were studied in a nationally representative sample of 3,730 white men aged sixteen to twenty-eight who were interviewed yearly over a five-year period. Findings indicate that as the youth aged, higher agreement between jobs and aspirations (classified according to Holland's typology) occurred. In addition, the distributions of both aspirations and actual jobs differed with age. Larger proportions of the older men were engaged in enterprising work, and the distribution of aspirations, which at age sixteen diverged markedly from the distribution of jobs, resembled that distribution more closely by age twenty-eight. (Implications for changing strategies of vocational counseling and research are included.) (Author/LRA)