A key issue in careers work is the extent to which practitioners can and should provide advice based on predictions about the workforce in the future. This article examines one major recent report on such predictions and considers how different ways of looking at the data lead to different conclusions.
It takes up the issue of the ‘clever society’ in the light of these predictions and debates about the nature of work and society.
The quality of occupational predictions and the implications of this for practice are also discussed.
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