The critical point is that such a phenomenon does exist, apart from the issue of whether it is any more extensive today than in the past. Our popular mentality perhaps even the academic literature is dominated by the single career concept, i.e., that an individual has or should have a single lifetime occupational role identity. Perhaps in a more static society, it made sense from both the individual and societal points of view to stress the acquisition of a single set of skills to be used during one's working life, a span that actually was not very great to begin with.
But today the average life expectancy is higher, and the social and physical technology of the environment is constantly in flux. Longevity, the first factor encouraging this trend, increases the probability that a number of intervening experiences environmental and subjective will affect the individual's occupational self identity and his continued interest in a given occupation.
The second factor, changing technology, is naturally accompanied by changes in the skills necessary to use that technology. One of the critical points here is that our sources of socialization chiefly the family and the school do little, if anything, to prepare members of society for more than one career prior to their entering the world of work. Such preparation need not be strictly devoted to actual acquisition of specific task skills of widely varying character. Perhaps it would be more relevant to prepare young people psychologically for the fact that, before they leave the labor force, they will have entered a variety of somewhat differing jobs. Another critical point is that, with perhaps the exception of the military establishment, our other institutions that touch the lives of adults are doing little to make it possible for middle aged and older persons to enter new occupations.
One could make a case for the proposition that such institutions do everything in their power to discourage and make impossible the facilitation of occupational change. A more charitable proposition would be that in our effort to solve certain problems and to achieve other goals, we have developed solutions and mechanisms that, without malice or deliberate intent, function today as anachronistic obstacles to the encouragement and facilitation of second careers. Typical examples include provisions of pension plans, narrow range seniority rules, and early retirement.
Thomas Green of Syracuse University's Educational Policy Research Center has argued before the House of Representatives Committee on Science and Astronautics that the post industrial society will have to be based on the cultivation of knowledge rather than on craft skills the idea of reshaping the education system to encourage multiple careers by individuals and even provide for occasional "moratoriums from productive work."
Another possible factor may be the emergence of concern regarding flexible or second careers, namely, the saliency among adults of a discrepancy between original aspirations and mid life achievements. It is interesting and at first, to some observers, paradoxical that amount of education is positively related to the tendency among employed men to define work as an activity that is required or not enjoyed. Weiss and Kahn, in their study of Detroit workers, suggest their own explanations for this finding, but another may be added that is derived from a discussion by Brim in his survey of adult socialization research, Brim points out that the greater the person's educational achievements, the higher his aspirations, but that higher aspirations are accompanied by a higher risk of non achievement of those aspirations. He states further that a person "handles these discrepancies for a long period of time by successively displacing fulfillment of aspirations into the future, but the day of reckoning does come."
Second Careers Critical for Some
The point to be made here is that persons whose occupational achievements do not equal their original aspirations come to look upon their jobs as something that must be performed but not necessarily enjoyed. Such persons may constitute the group for whom second career opportunities may be the most critical.
The need for a policy of second career opportunities can be strengthened by such arguments as (1) the need for upgrading middle level workers and professionals to "make room" for lower working class men and women who complain about being in dead end jobs; (2) the needs of society for more people to perform higher level functions and public service functions now in sad neglect; and (3) the need for workers today to be "loose" when it comes to over identification with one occupation in times of high unemployment. In a study of unemployed workers done by the Upjohn Institute, it was found that workers who looked for jobs really different from what they had been doing regularly had a higher job finding success rate.
Preliminary findings of my own research may shed some light on the characteristics of potential candidates for flexible careers in the adult, male working population. During July and August of 1970, interviews with approximately 300 white male workers in four selected urban areas of Pennsylvania were conducted, primarily concentrating on working conditions, job satisfaction, social and political attitudes and behavior, and related topics. The material presented below is based on a preliminary coding and tabulation of the first 210 interviews. Of the 210 respondents, 140 were 40 years of age or older. Thirty five per cent of these older men may be considered as candidates for second careers.
Let us first examine the variables on which there is little or no difference between the candidates and non candidates for second careers. Three items are especially pertinent. First, there is little difference between the two types insofar as hourly wages or their felt adequacy regarding take home pay; second, the two groups are virtually identical regarding family income; third, there is no overwhelming contrast regarding education, although one might expect to find the average education level of the candidate group higher since they tend to be the younger members of the 40 plus men's sample. The critical point is that the usually considered economic variables such as income and/or adequacy of take home pay do not appear to contribute to an identification or understanding of the second career candidate.
It is in the social psychological sphere where differences between the two groups appear. For example, the candidates for second careers have higher achievement values, and it may be suspected that if we had administered McClelland's projective test, they would also register higher on achievement motivation. As a further indication of this on the behavioral level, a higher proportion of the 40 plus candidates report that they actually have tried to get into a really different kind of work.
The other variables on which the candidates for second careers stand out as different their lower perceived mobility chances in their current jobs, their greater preference for a job different from the one they have now if they were completely free to go into any type of job they wanted, their lower job satisfaction all point to a group of men who would benefit from a more structured opportunity program enabling them to shift to new and different kinds of work life. Their apparent job discontent (or greater aspirations for a different kind of job), as well as the wider gap between their aspirations and their actual achievements, may lead to some socially undesirable points of view. Witness the one third among them who feel employers and/or unions have done too much to help minority groups, a proportion twice that among the no candidates. That they are really more discontented or more ambitious or more restless is further confirmed by the finding that nearly one half of the candidates (45 per cent) say that they would choose a training or education program that would lead them to a better job away from their present employer. In contrast, among the group of non candidates some did say they would take a training program but only one sixth (16 per cent) would choose a program for a better job elsewhere.
One of the most provocative findings is the high proportion of the second career candidates who reported having a low degree of autonomy on their jobs as measured by items adapted from Turner and Lawrence's research. These men feel that they have little or no freedom to do their jobs as they want to, and can use little or none of their potential ideas and skills on their current jobs. Only a small minority (10 per cent) report having an excellent chance to advance themselves or to be promoted in their present work situations, in contrast to more than one third of the non candidates who are by definition either not interested in changing occupations, or not willing to take an upgrading training or education program.
When we combine any two of the three variables of achievement values, aspiration achievement discrepancy, and autonomy on the job, the differences between the candidates and non candidates become even more striking. The ratio of the proportion of candidates with high achievement values and a high aspiration achievement discrepancy to the proportion of non candidates with the same combination of social psychological attributes is more than 2.5 to 1 (33 versus 13 per cent). The proportion of candidates with high discrepancy and low autonomy is in a ratio of more than 2.8 to 1 (27 versus 9.5 per cent). In the case of those with low autonomy and high values, the ratio is 4 to 1 (28 versus 7 per cent).
In summary, one could argue that there is a malaise among a significant portion of white male workers in America the "blue collar blues" to use a recently coined journalistic expression. Much of this relates, it appears, to a growing need for flexible or second careers among such persons. The same may be said even for the technician and professional classes in our society. Nor should we exclude the growing numbers of minority group members of our labor force. I have presented here one suggestion for identifying such persons and, in a preliminary fashion, have also indicated some of the social psychological dimensions in which they differ substantially from the so called non candidates for second careers. Effective use of such data might contribute to a program that conceivably could combine improved counseling and education efforts designed to improve the work lives and social environment of the contemporary generation of men and women in our constantly changing, tense society.
