外刊精读 |《经济学人》：00后都想做什么工作？

原文译文

Bartleby

巴特比

Youngsters’ job preferences and prospects are mismatched

年轻人的工作偏好和前景不匹配

Teenage picks

青少年的选择

1. THE WORLD of work is changing. Are people ready for the new job outlook? A survey of 15-year-olds across 41 countries by the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, found that teenagers may have unrealistic expectations about the kind of work that will be available.

工作场所正在发生变化。人们准备好迎接新的工作前景了吗？经合组织(OECD)调查了41个国家的15岁青少年，发现他们对未来的工作有不切实际的期望。

2. Four of the five most popular choices were traditional professional roles: doctors, teachers, business managers and lawyers. Teenagersclustered aroundthe most popular jobs, with the top ten being chosen by 47% of boys and 53% of girls. Those shares were significantly higher than when the survey was conducted back in 2000.

在五大最受欢迎的职业选择中，有四大传统职业：医生、教师、公司经理和律师。青少年选择的十大最受欢迎的工作是47%的男孩和53%的女孩。这些工作比例明显高于2000年的调查水平。

3. The rationale for this selection was partly down towishful thinkingon the part of those surveyed (designers, actors and musical performers were three of the top 15 jobs). Youth must be allowed a bit of hope. When Bartleby was a teenager, his ambitions were to play cricket for England and become prime minister; neither ambition was achieved (a lucky escape for the country on both counts).

选择这个职位的部分原因是受访者的一厢情愿（设计师、演员和音乐表演者是前15名工作中最受欢迎的前三名）。我们必须给年轻人一些希望。当巴特比十几岁时，他的抱负成为了英格兰板球运动员或英国首相；这两个目标都没有实现（这是国家的幸运）。

4. Furthermore, teenagers can hardly be expected to have anin-depthknowledge of theminutiaeof labour-market trends. They will have encountered doctors and teachers in their daily lives. Other popular professions, such as lawyers and police officers, will be familiar from films and social media. But many people end up in jobs they would not have heard of in their school years. Yousettle forwhat is available.

此外，很难期望青少年对劳动力市场的趋势有深入的了解。他们在日常生活中经常接触医生和老师。其他受欢迎的职业，如律师和警察，经常出现在电影和社交媒体上。但许多人最终从事了他们在学生时代从未听说过的工作。他们别无选择，只能接受他们能找到的工作。

5. The OECD points out that some of the fastest-growing occupations are rarely mentioned by young people. But surely the surprise is not that “user support technician” is ranked only 158th out of 543 professions and “computer user support specialist” appears in 229th place. Rather, it is astonishing that young people know that such jobs exist at all.

经合组织指出，年轻人很少提到一些增长最快的职业。但令人惊讶的是，用户技术支持者在543个职业中排名第158位，而计算机用户支持专家排名第229位。更令人惊讶的是，年轻人知道有这样的工作。

6. At least teenagers who want to tackle climate change, as many profess to, are in luck. America’s Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) predicts that the two fastest-growing occupations over the next few years will besolar-photovoltaicinstallers andwind-turbinetechnicians.

至少那些想要解决气候变化问题的青少年是幸运的，正如许多人所说。美国劳工统计局(BLS)预计未来几年增长最快的两个职业将是太阳能光伏安装人员和风力涡轮机技术人员。

7. Some parts of the OECD survey are disturbing. Even though top performers in maths or science are evenly matched among males and females, a gender gap persists in terms of aspiration. More boys than girls expect to work in science or engineering—the average gap across the OECD is more than ten percentage points. The problem continues in higher education; with the exception of biological and biomedical sciences, degrees in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths) are male-dominated. In America women earn just 35.5% of undergraduate STEM degrees and 33.7% of PhDs.

组织调查的某些部分令人不安。尽管在数学或科学领域表现出色的男女学生势均力敌，但性别差距仍然存在。希望在科学或工程领域工作的男孩比女孩多——经合组织统计的平均差距超过10个百分点。除生物和生物医学科学外，这一问题在高等教育中仍然存在，STEM学科(科学、技术、工程术、工程和数学)。在美国，女性只获得35.5%STEM本科学位和博士学位33.7%。

8. Things are even worse in technology. In Britain only one in five computer-science university students is a woman—a big problem at a time when the World Economic Forum predicts that technology will create more than a quarter of all jobs in newly emerging professions. But women are underrepresented in some important fields of technology; they have only 12% of jobs in cloud computing, for example. Something about the tech industry puts off female applicants.

科技行业更糟。在英国，只有五分之一的计算机科学大学生是女性，这是一个大问题，因为世界经济论坛预测，在新兴职业中，技术将创造四分之一以上的就业机会。但在一些重要的技术领域，女性的比例较低；例如，在云计算领域，只有12%的女性。科技行业的一些事情让女性望而却步。

9. Women play a much bigger role in the health- and social-care sectors, which are alsopoised forexpansion. The BLS forecasts that eight of the 12 fastest-growing jobs in America over the next few years will be in those areas, with roles ranging from occupational-therapy assistants to genetic counsellors. The snag is that some of these jobs are not very well paid. Home-health and personal-care aides (with the third- and fourth-fastest growth rates, respectively) hadmedianannual salaries in 2018 of just over $24,000.

妇女在医疗保健和社会保健部门中发挥着更大的作用，这些部门也在扩大。劳工统计局预测，未来几年，美国将在职业治疗助理和基因顾问等职业治疗助理和基因顾问。问题是，有些工作的工资并不高。2018年家庭健康和个人护理助理（增长率分别排名第三和第四）的平均年薪略高于2.4万美元。

10. Some jobs in health care are extremelylucrative, of course. But another gender imbalance emerges here: women make up only one-third of American health-care executives. In contrast, they tend to dominate the poorly paid social-care workforce. In Britain 83% of social-care workers are female. That suggests men shun the field, perhaps because they do not perceive caring to be a masculine trait.

当然，医疗行业的一些工作非常有利可图。但另一种性别失衡出现在这里：女性只占美国医疗保健行业高管的三分之一。相比之下，女性是收入社会护理劳动力的领导者。在英国，83%的社会福利工作者是女性。这表明男性避免这一领域，也许是因为他们不认为关心是男性的特征。

11. The biggest problem in the labour market, then, may not be that teenagers are focusing on a few well-known jobs. It could be a mismatch: not enough talented women move into technology and not enough men take jobs in social care. Any economist will recognise this as an inefficient use of resources. Wherever the root of the problem lies—be it the education system, government policy or corporate recruiting practices—it needs to be identified and fixed.

因此，劳动力市场最大的问题可能不是青少年专注于一些众所周知的工作。这可能是一种错位：没有足够的有才华的女性进入科技行业，也没有足够的男性从事社会福利工作。任何经济学家都会意识到，这是对资源的低效利用。无论问题的根源在哪里——教育体系、政府政策和企业招聘实践——都需要识别和纠正。

精读解析

篇章内容

P1：背景：经合组织对青少年的调查，发现他们对未来的工作有不切实际的幻想。

P2—P6：青少年职业选择：第一：大多数选择传统职业（P2)。原因:是受访者的一厢情愿（P3)；对劳动力市场没有深入的了解（P4)。第二:目前增长迅速的新兴职业很少选择，但乐观的一面是青少年对这些职业有所了解（P5—P6）。

P7—P10：调查中发现的另一个问题是性别差距仍然存在。

P11：结论：劳动力市场最大的问题可能不是青少年专注于一些著名的工作，而是劳动力市场的性别差距，这是对资源的低效利用。

重点单词

cluster around包围；紧紧围绕；包围；…而聚集；聚集

【例句】

And by the middle of the Victorian period, sandwich sellers clustered around every factory gate.

维多利亚时代中期，三明治小贩聚集在每个工厂门口。