tated or constrained by ascribed characteristics, educational and
labor market institutional arrangements, and local contexts as they
are to be concerned with personal choiceof jobs and occupations.
Most of the theory and research of sociologists of work is therefore
far removed from vocational counseling and career decision-making
processes. Nonetheless, it has some important implications for career
counseling, however uncultivated they are to date.
Guidance and career counselors can recognize, and help their
clients recognize, that career choice is not a one-time event but
that some decisions do have long-term implications for ongoing
career opportunities.With rapid change in the employment sector, occupational op-
tions cannot be predicted far into the future. Occupational inter-
ests and values can also change considerably over the life course
(Johnson, 2001b). With the nature of jobs and personal interests
both changing, searching for a good fit between the two has the
potential to be a lifelong project. At the same time, it is important
for clients to understand that some choices they make with respect
to their career will close doors on other opportunities or make other
career possibilities more difficult to pursue later. Clients may need
help in seeing the complex, interconnected nature of early and later
work experiences, as well as the structural constraints they are likely
to encounter in pursuing their goals.
The prolongation of the transition to adulthood, as we have
noted, has been associated with delay in serious vocational consid-
eration and decision making. As a result, many youth are left to
make consequential decisions at a time when opportunities have
narrowed and they have moved out of the protective institutions of
childhood and adolescence—family and school—where there were
adults whose primary objective it was to guide them. Engaging young
people in thinking about work and making tentative explorations
(but not necessarily deciding on a career path) earlier rather than
later would be highly desirable (Mortimer, in press).
A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE 67