Theoretical Contributions About Young People’s Career Development and Wellbeing

The collection of chapters in this volume all explore how career development experiences during education are relevant for our wellbeing in youth career transitions. This chapter theoretically synthesizes the approaches and findings of all contributions in this edited collection. Overall, the contributions in this book show that career development experiences while in education matter, not only for employment outcomes but also for our subjective wellbeing in early careers. Our conclusion points toward a need for theoretically integrating (i) the sensemaking role of time, (ii) resource-based approaches to careers, as well as (iii) acknowledging systematic barriers in the labor market. Methodologically, the collection of chapters in this book shows the value of nationally representative longitudinal datasets that focus on young people’s educational and labor market experiences. We call for more interdisciplinary and rigorous approaches to career development in order to capture the complexities of young people’s early career experiences and implications for subjective wellbeing.