In this post Tom Staunton of the University of Derby, explores the role that labour market information can play in supporting a social just approach to career guidance.

Social Justice is, rightly, gaining an increasing focus in career guidance thought and practice. In contrast, it feels that our ideas about labour market information (LMI) are fairly set and well established. So how might thinking through LMI be helpful for developing new thinking about social justice?

It is my contention that connecting LMI and social justice is not just possible but absolutely essential. Let me explain. To paraphrase Frank Parsons, career development is an inter-relationship between a right knowledge of the self, of opportunities and a rational method to relate the two. This formula unfurls a broad canvas on which to develop career guidance thinking.

The starting point for me is to start trying to think about what the ‘right knowledge of opportunities’ entails. Though often career guidance theory and practice has focussed on lots of hard figures, industry trends, future forecasts and skills shortages there is no need to restrain LMI to this. For me LMI is simply stuff we can learn from that helps develop useful knowledge about our future careers. This follows Rosie Alexander and colleges who have described LMI as “… any information about the functioning of the labour market” regardless of source, content or any other validity criteria.

So how can LMI and social justice be linked together? I’d like to draw attention to a number of different points. For anyone who is interested I have discussed these thoughts in more detail in two recent articles – “Labour market information and social justice: a critical examination” and “Exploring critical perspectives on labour market information through the lens of elite graduate recruitment”

LMI can help disadvantaged groups

There is a fair amount of research that argues that a key reason why certain populations struggle with their career development is a lack of access to appropriate LMI. Quite simply if you know less about the world of work you are going to find it harder to navigate it. Knowing less about potential careers often sits alongside other structural disadvantages like being part of a socially marginalised or disadvantaged group. LMI is therefore key to enhancing social mobility and enabling disadvantaged groups to achieve better labour market outcomes.

But there are a few significant problems with this approach which we need to worry of. Firstly, it puts the focus on individuals to solve their own problems. It is not always the case that if someone knew enough and followed the right advice they would end up in a positive destination, sometimes (perhaps even often) problems are external to the individual.

Secondly, it assumes that there is ‘decent’ work available. Work is not necessarily safe. We can’t assume that the ‘right’ job is always a personal cure for everyone. Look at any research on why people leave work and it’s often centered around pay, workload, workplace culture and the perceived value of the work. Very little in terms of skill matching ever comes up in this sort of research. This at the least means we need to ask different questions of work other than ‘what skills does this job need’ or even ‘what value sets would fit this job’.

Finally, the above approach often argues that ‘disadvantaged’ groups end up in ‘bad” jobs. This can often obscure the agencies and choices that different groups make in choosing work. Though we shouldn’t ignore the human suffering that is often linked to work, career practitioners should be careful not to think that their idea of ‘bad’ is everyone’s. Just because working in a small local business isn’t a ‘graduate’ or a ‘professional’ role doesn’t mean it is necessarily a bad outcome for the people involved. People find meaning and value in different places and we need to use LMI in a way that supports this.

LMI can expose the ‘un-safety’ or in-decency of work

Work is not always safe, or decent,  for individuals and does not always support individuals to flourish. Monica Castillo, working for ILO has argued that traditionally labour market statistics (which is obviously closely related to LMI) have tended to focus on issues such the demand and supply of labour, wages and how jobs can be classified. Labour statistics have ignored issues related to decent work as a concepts such as;

• How family-friendly are work arrangements?
• Do I get a living wage?
• Do workers have to work long hours?
• Can I join a union?
• Do migrant workers face discrimination?
• What happens when I fall sick?
• How dangerous is work?
• Will I get paid maternity / paternity leave when I get a baby?

We might add to this other concerns such as gender equality, levels of workplace harassment, the extent the output of the work benefits society, the impact of the job on the environment among others. These are all things that people going through career transitions should care about and that we should engage young people in.

Unions are a vital part of protecting workers in many workplaces but how often do schools or universities even invite unions to talk as part of careers programs? Does careers practice help people understand their rights as well as their opportunities? Decent work as a concept gives us a picture of the sort of information that might be needed to respond to the challenges of the twenty-first century workplace.  

LMI can challenge our master narratives around work

As I have argued elsewhere, there is a growing temptation to see work, and particular forms of work as central to a process of individuals achieving worthwhile lives. This turns a career into a kind of liminal experience, almost like a religious ceremony that allows people to achieve personal wholeness.

I have argued that certain forms of work and career have almost becoming fetishised into allowing individuals to gain access to a socially engaged and personally meaningful life. This can have significant problems as it assumes that work is always central to our lives when for many people other things like family, social belonging, volunteering, crafts, religion etc. can be much more important. It also assumes that particular forms of work are better than others and that certain types of role (graduate jobs, professional roles etc.) allow us to access the good life.

There is a danger that LMI can be used to create exactly these sorts of distinctions if we are not careful. But there is also potential to use various sources of information to explore how people develop different understandings of meaning or even how different backgrounds and intellectual traditions might approach the link between work and the good life in different ways. This might particularly encourage career practitioners to use personal accounts of work or even fictional accounts with students to help them understand different ways people experience work and what different ways there are to develop a worthwhile career.

This approach builds on Sultana’s description of social justice linked to Derrida’s concept of hospitality; a socially just world will encompass multiple ways of being and living rather than assuming one culture can define this for everyone.