What jobs do 15-year-olds expect to do at 30?

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Every few years, thousands of teenagers are asked a very simple question: What job do you expect to have when you're 30?

It's an important question because having an answer helps teenagers plan for the future, whether that's taking a specific class or deciding whether to attend college. That's why the OECD's PISA survey has asked this question since 2000.

But in the last 20 years, we've seen a concerning trend: More and more teenagers name the same basic jobs, like doctor or lawyer, almost as if they're picking jobs out of a children's book. And even more worrisome is that more and more teenagers don't even name a job.

All of this hints that today's teenagers aren't thinking enough about their future plans – and, fair or not, this lack of career preparation will likely have lifelong consequences.

Note: The headline on this piece has been updated.
Previous headline: Why 25% of teens can't answer this question

Sources and further reading:
This OECD report argues that the narrowing answers to this question hint that teens are confused about their future careers: https://www.oecd.org/education/dream-jobs-teenagers-career-aspirations-and-the-future-of-work.htm

Here's the data from the PISA survey: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/
It's difficult to work with, but the codebook provides broad summaries of the data: https://webfs.oecd.org/pisa2018/PISA2018_CODEBOOK.xlsx

This study shows that students with science-related ambitions are far more likely to get science or engineering degrees, even if they aren’t as good at math: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1128690

This paper looks at the long term ramifications of being “misaligned” as a teenager: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42956558

If you’re a solutions-oriented person, this OECD report is about what we can do to help teenagers better think about their professional futures: https://www.oecd.org/education/indicators-of-teenage-career-readiness-6a80e0cc-en.htm

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