Job Aspirations before and after Labour Market Entry

Abstract

One important aspect of labour market experiences is whether young people achieve or fail to achieve any expectations they formed prior to starting work, and whether they have ambitions beyond their present employment. Failure to realise their aspirations may be one reason why young people were already dissatisfied with work after only two years in the labour market. In addition it was suggested by some careers advisers that handicapped young people often had unrealistic ambitions and that this was a major contributory factor to their relative lack of success in employment. Did the handicapped young people in our sample have unrealistic ambitions? This chapter looks at the aspirations of handicapped young people in conjunction with their non-handicapped peers, goes on to assess them in relation to ability and finally attempts to answer some of the questions begged by the analysis.