Career Education and Labour Market Conditions: The Skills Gap Myth

Abstract

This paper investigates the prevailing high-tech knowledge-based economy rationale supporting current career education program development and contrasts it with labour market realities by addressing the following questions: a) What employment sectors anticipate significant job growth, and what skill levels or academic knowledge are required to work within those sectors? and, b) will increasing the level of student knowledge and skills make a difference in addressing the problems identified as the motivation for various skill initiatives in career education programs? Based on our empirical analysis of labour market conditions and a number of subsequent inferences, we conclude that the trend toward career education in public schooling is predicated on fallacious assumptions about present and prognosticated employment patterns combined with ideological attempts to deflect public attention from the systemic crises facing modern industrialized countries.