ABSTRACT
Highly educated workers tend to be motivated by intrinsic job factors—at least when they begin their careers. Yet most people are just as unaware of the long-term consequences of their educational, marital, and childbearing choices as they are of long-term trends in the job market. Opportunities grow with either increases in the total number of jobs or decreases in the total number of workers. Along with demographic projection and linear extrapolation, research gives us a framework for understanding changes in the world of work and careers. Both approaches—research and linear extrapolation—show that many older jobs are becoming obsolete. Most people consider job satisfaction only slightly less important than marital, familial, and romantic satisfaction. Burnout, the ultimate sign of job dissatisfaction, is a problem that many professional and managerial workers face. Age is one of the few biographic characteristics that can serve as a reliable predictor of job satisfaction.
