You Can't Choose a Career You Don't Know Exists?

Canada has just announced an $880-million investment to help young Canadians aged 15 to 30 gain paid, hands-on experience in construction and the skilled trades. That's great news and a massive investment. But we need to solve an earlier problem. Very few young people can see or imagine the full range of possibilities available to them.

The evidence is troubling. OECD research involving 690,000 teenagers in 81 countries found that almost half expect to work in just 10 occupations. Their career expectations have changed remarkably little since 2000, even as technology and the labour market have transformed around them.

In Canada, only 13% of 15-year-olds say they plan to work in the skilled trades. Yet roughly one-third say they would consider doing so. That gap is a big problem.

Canada can invest billions in apprenticeships, colleges, training programs, and nation-building projects. Employers can desperately need electricians, welders, machinists, technicians, technologists, and people for occupations that barely existed a generation ago.

But none of it solves the problem if young people never discover those possibilities.

We need to start much earlier. Children and teenagers need repeated opportunities to meet people doing real work, visit workplaces, discover emerging occupations, and understand that university is one valuable pathway among many.

That's how we build career agency: the capacity to see possibilities, understand pathways, make informed choices and adapt as opportunities change.

Exposure → curiosity → possibility → agency → experience → meaningful work.

The new federal investment strengthens an important part of the bridge. Now we need to build the whole bridge, from the first moment a child begins imagining a future to the moment they find their place in Canada's economy. Because a nation's greatest loss is the talent its people never get to use.

AI Acknowledgement: I conceived and wrote this post, with creative and editorial assistance from my partner, ChatGPT.