Information Brief 2012-9
Career Interests by Occupational Field
In broad terms, the career plans of ACT-tested 2011 high school graduates are similar across racial/ethnic groups. ACT organizes occupations into 26 occupational fields. We focus here on 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 2011 graduates planned to work in one of these 9 fields.
Career Interests by Race/Ethnicity
| Occupational Field | African American | Asian | Hispanic | White |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Applied Arts (Visual) | 5.7 | 4.4 | 6.1 | 5.2 |
| Community Service | 4.6 | 3.4 | 6.3 | 7.6 |
| Education | 10.8 | 3.4 | 6.7 | 5.6 |
| Engineering & Technologies | 10.5 | 13.2 | 11.6 | 9.6 |
| Health Care | 10.3 | 9.2 | 12.3 | 14.4 |
| Management | 5.8 | 6.9 | 6.8 | 9.4 |
| Medical Diagnosis & Treatment | 13.0 | 20.4 | 11.4 | 10.3 |
| Natural Science & Technologies | 7.1 | 10.2 | 6.2 | 4.7 |
| Social Science | 5.9 | 4.6 | 7.3 | 5.9 |
The chart above shows that similar percentages of students from each group are choosing many of the same occupational fields. More than 10% of the students are interested in engineering & technologies, medical diagnosis & treatment, or health care fields. These fields are popular with all racial/ethnic groups.
Note: Data are based on about 60% of the 1.6 million ACT-tested 2011 high school graduates who reported an occupational choice and were very sure or fairly sure about their choice. About 6% of these students did not report any specific career choice and were excluded from the analysis.
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