Aspiration-Job Match: Age Trends in a Large, Nationally Representative Sample of Young White Men.
Age trends in the matcli between vocational aspirations and actual jobs were studied in a ..ationally-representative sample of 3730 white men aged 16 to 28 who were interviewed yearly over a five-year period. As the youth aged, higher agreement between jobs and aspirations (classified according to Hollai.d's typology) occurred. In addition, the distributions of both aspirations and actual jobs differed with age. Larger proportions of the older me: were engaged in enterprising work, and the th.stribution of aspirations, which at age 16 diverged markedly from the distribution of jobs, resembled that distribution more closely by age 28. Implications for changing strategies of vocational counseling and research are discussed.