TPC-Journal-V5-Issue1

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 1 9 Discussion The principal findings of this study are examined in terms of the three questions that guided the research, followed by a discussion of the study’s limitations and implications for counseling practice. Occupational Titles by RIASEC Code Information about jobs and employment used in counseling may be affected by the uneven distribution of occupational titles describing work across RIASEC areas. Over 60% of the titles used in 2010 were in the Realistic and Enterprising areas, and this distribution has been consistent over the past 6 decades. It is noteworthy that the percentages of occupational titles in the Investigative and Conventional areas in 2010 were the same, but the income reported across the six areas was the most discrepant between these two areas. Labor market information across the six areas is not always equivalent. G. D. Gottfredson and Holland (1989) reported that the Dictionary of Occupational Titles also showed variations in the distribution of RIASEC codes for occupational titles. They were interested in the number of times each RIASEC letter appeared somewhere in the three-letter code for each occupation in the Dictionary of Occupational Titles and reported the following: Realistic, 10,708 times; Investigative, 2,551; Artistic, 570; Social, 6,606; Enterprising, 10,405; and Conventional, 5,999. These data reveal that upon examining the world of work from a RIASEC perspective, counselors can obtain a theory-based view of work environments that is not equitable across the six areas. Counselors can use RIASEC codes to inform clients about work and to increase their understanding of occupations and employment. Information about jobs and employing organizations changes more frequently than information about occupations (e.g., typical work duties, training requirements, working conditions; Reardon, Lenz, Sampson, & Peterson, 2012). Perhaps lessons from the field of general semantics (Johnson, 1946) can be useful here. For example, the word chair can communicate information about the arrangement of furniture in a room, but this word does not communicate everything known about chairs, which in reality may take many different forms and be built of varied kinds of materials. The same is true for occupational terms. There are many different carpenters working in varied job positions and for varied employers, but the term carpenter still has meaning in communications because it is generally understood that not all carpenters are the same. Over the 6 decades of this analysis, the number of census occupations in each RIASEC area has been relatively static. This stability indicates that there is considerable permanence in the array of the named occupations in the census reports about the workforce. This finding is contrary to the observations by Savickas (2012) and Savickas et al. (2009) regarding instability of the concept of an occupation in the contemporary global economy. Employment in Six Areas of Work The findings of this study report both the numbers of persons employed and the percentages of employment across RIASEC areas for six census periods. We believe that information about employment in the past can be instructive for future career planning. Table 2 reports the numeric and percentage changes in employment over 6 decades. The table shows the actual number of persons employed according to the decennial censuses over the 60-year period. This table and Figure 2 show the percentage changes—the distribution of the workforce within the RIASEC categories. Occupations that employ the largest numbers of people are in the Realistic, Social and Enterprising areas, with less employment in the Investigative and Artistic areas. The latter two areas report both the fewest numbers employed and the smallest percentages of employment across the six RIASEC areas. The current emphasis on preparation for careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields involves occupations that do not employ large numbers of people. These occupations, often