Information Brief 2012-35
Career Interests by Occupational Field and Race/Ethnicity 2012
The career plans of ACT-tested 2012 high school graduates are similar across racial/ethnic groups.1 ACT groups occupations into 26 occupational fields. The chart below includes 9 occupational fields that were chosen by at least 5% of graduates who were very sure or fairly sure about their occupational choice. About 75% of ACT-tested graduates planned to work in one of these 9 fields.
Career Interests by Race/Ethnicity
| Career Interest | African American | Asian | Hispanic | White |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Applied Arts (Visual) | 5.34% | 4.09% | 6.05% | 5.29% |
| Community Services | 9.6% | 4.2% | 8.2% | 6.92% |
| Education | 5.18% | 2.72% | 5.77% | 9.75% |
| Engineering & Technologies | 9.88% | 14.18% | 11.64% | 10.74% |
| Health Care | 15.65% | 9.36% | 13.2% | 11.94% |
| Management | 9.41% | 7.06% | 6.98% | 5.52% |
| Medical Diagnosis & Treatment | 9.41% | 20.54% | 10.3% | 12.39% |
| Natural Science & Technologies | 4.88% | 10.46% | 6.53% | 7.25% |
| Social Science | 5.53% | 4.04% | 7.8% | 5.53% |
Note: Data are based on 969,733 ACT-tested 2012 high school graduates who reported an occupational choice and were very sure or fairly sure about their choice. About 9 percent of those students were very sure or fairly sure about their choice but did not specify it.
Similar percentages of students from each racial/ethnic group are choosing many of the same occupational fields. More than 10% of students in each race/ethnicity group are interested in engineering and technologies, health care, or medical diagnosis and treatment fields.
1A similar pattern was observed in 2011, see ACT Information Brief 2012-9.
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