ABSTRACT
During the last decade, there has been growing recognition of the increasing cultural diversity of the population and the workforce in the United States. With this recognition of the changing U.S. demography has come an increasing number of publications devoted to improving our understanding of racial and ethnic minorities in the workforce (see Jackson & Associates, 1992; and Triandis, Kurowski, & Gelfand, 1994, for two recent examples). The current book is an addition to this burgeoning collection, but from a perspective embedded in the field of counseling psychology. In 1991, I served as the Guest Editor of a special issue of the Career Development Quarterly, which focused on the Career Development of Racial and Ethnic Minorities. An excerpt from my Guest Editorial (Leong, 1991) for that special issue provides a context for the need of the current book:
As we begin the last decade of the twentieth century, there has been much discussion about major changes in the composition of the workforce in this country. One of these changes involve the increasing cultural diversity of the human resources that underlie our organizational systems. The often quoted Hudson Institute report on Workforce 2000 has identified several major trends for the United States workforce in the year 2000 (Johnson, 1987). First, growth in the population and the workforce will proceed more slowly than in the past half century. Second, the population and the workforce will both be older, while the pool of young workers will become smaller. Actually, there will be more middle-aged workers in the workforce in the year 2000. Third, women will continue to enter the workforce in significant numbers. For example, the female share of the workforce will increase from 42.5% in 1980 to 47.5% in 2000, while the number of females working will grow from 51.5% in 1980 to 61.1% in 2000. The increase in the number of women participating in the workforce from 1986 to 2000 will be 25% while the increase for men will be only 11.8%. Fourth, there will be more minority persons in the workforce with an increase of 13.6% in 1980 to 15.5% in 2000. From 1986 to 2000, the number of White workers will increase 14.6%, while the number of Black workers will increase 28.8%, Hispanic workers 74%, and Asian workers 11.6%. Finally, there will also be more immigrants in our workforce. All of these changes will result in a significantly more diverse workforce in the United States; only 15% of the new entrants into the workforce between 1985–2000 being native White males, and 42% being native White female, 20% native minorities, and 22% immigrants.
As researchers and organizational leaders have begun to discuss the strategic implications of these changes (e.g., Morrison & Von Glinow, 1990), more and more career counselors and vocational psychologists are also considering the manner in which they need to prepare themselves to meet the upcoming challenges of increasing cultural diversity (e.g., McDaniels, 1989). This special issue of the Quarterly has been produced as one step in the process of preparing career counselors for working with culturally different clients, particularly racial and ethnic minority persons.
