Studies of career development highlight the importance of finding a good “fit” between individual values, needs, and abilities and the experiences and rewards to be found in particular occupations. Rapid economic change and labor market turbulence make career choice and development life-long processes. Still, early careers are particularly unstable, as young workers move from “survival jobs” to “career jobs” in their quest for a good person-job fit. Little is known, however, about the psychological orientations and behaviors in the post-adolescent period that foster longer-term success in the world of work. The maintenance of high aspirations, crystallization of career goals, and intensive job search may be particularly important. Using multilevel latent class analysis applied to longitudinal data obtained from 1,010 youth surveyed by the ongoing Youth Development Study (YDS), this article examines the interrelations of psychological orientations and behaviors indicative of agentic striving from age 18 to 31. In addition, we assess how these trajectories influence adaptation to declining labor market conditions during the severe economic recession that began in 2007. We find that those who maintain high aspiration and certainty over career goals are better insulated against unemployment between 2007 and 2009 (age 33 to 35), even when educational and self-identified career attainments, adolescent achievement orientations, and social background variables indicative of advantage are controlled. They also have higher hourly wages in 2009.

Given mounting aspirations to graduate from college and pervasive difficulties in obtaining a four-year degree, growing numbers of young people in the United States have become "underachievers." Using data from the ongoing Youth Development Study, the authors examine the prevalence of "holding on" and "letting go" of high aspirations and the precursors of these states as youth move from high school through their mid-twenties. They find that advantage stemming from the family of origin and changing occupational circumstances engender persistence or reappraisal of earlier educational goals.

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Objective Both loneliness and use of psychotropic drugs are common in later life. While loneliness has been found to be associated with psychotropic drugs use, most studies have been cross-sectional, and we know less about their longitudinal associations. Methods Drawing on five waves of data from Health and Retirement Study and two statistical approaches (fixed-effects and cross-lagged panel models), we examine longitudinal associations between loneliness and use of prescription pain and depression/anxiety medications. Results Across 57,654 observations among 20,589 respondents, 22.8% reported regular use of pain prescription medications, 17.8% regular use of depression/anxiety prescription medication, and 15.6% feeling lonely in the past week. Loneliness and use of depression/anxiety medications were associated according to both modelling approaches, net of covariates. In years when a respondent reported feeling lonely, odds of regular use of depression/anxiety medications were 1.42 times higher (p<.001) than years when they did not feel lonely. Regarding reciprocation, odds of regular depression/anxiety medication use in a given wave range from 1.3 to 1.5 times higher if loneliness was reported in prior wave. Likewise, the odds of reporting loneliness in a given wave range from 1.5 to 1.8 times higher if regular depression/anxiety medication was reported in prior wave. Discussion Prior loneliness predicts contemporaneous regular use of depression/anxiety prescription medications. While this confirms the directional association found in prior studies, we found prior use of depression/anxiety medications is also associated with increased odds of loneliness, suggesting further research is needed to understand mechanisms that explain their associations and potential interventions.