Entering the Labour Market in Britain: The Survival of Traditional Opportunity Structures

Abstract

This article analyses the career development from age 16 to 20 of representative samples from Kirkcaldy, Liverpool, Sheffield and Swindon who were surveyed by mailed questionnaire in three successive years – 1987, 1988 and 1989. Although most respondents attributed significant power of career determination to themselves, the evidence shows that the young people's career choices had typically been inconsequential for their later achievements. These had depended on their places of residence, secondary school qualifications, and social class backgrounds. The samples' self-concepts and social beliefs were not systematically affected by, but had played a part in determining, their career paths. However, social class origins, on account of their cumulative effects at successive career stages, were the best predictors of the samples' longer-term career trajectories. The evidence from this research shows that the benefits of the new opportunities in post-compulsory education and youth training that were introduced in Britain in the 1980s were filtered by the traditional predictors of career success. Furthermore, the main routes into the workforce of the 1970s and before – an academic track for high achievers in education, and employment-led inductions from age 16 or 17 for the rest – remained the main routes at the end of the 1980s.