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并不匹配

　　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.

　　职场正在发生变化。人们准备好迎接新的工作前景了吗?经合组织(OECD)对41个国家的15岁青少年进行了一项调查，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. Teenagers clustered around the 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.

　　在五个比较受欢迎的职业选择中，有四个传统职业：医生、教师、公司经理和律师。青少年选择的比较受欢迎工作的前十名由47%的男孩和53%的女孩选出。这些工作占比明显高于2000年进行调查时的水平。

　　3. The rationale for this selection was partly down to wishful thinking on 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比较受欢迎的前15名工作中排名前三的)。必须给年轻人一点希望。当巴特比十几岁的时候，他的抱负成为英格兰的板球运动员，或者成为英国首相;这两个目标都没有实现(这是国家之幸)。

　　4. Furthermore, teenagers can hardly be expected to have an in-depth knowledge of the minutiae of 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. You settle for what is available.

　　此外，很难期望青少年对劳动力市场趋势有深入的了解。他们在日常生活中经常接触到的就是医生和老师。其他受欢迎的职业，如律师和警察，他们也会经常在电影和社交媒体中见到。但许多人最终从事了他们在学生时代从未听说过的工作。他们无奈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，一些增长最快的职业很少被年轻人提及。但令人惊讶的肯定不是“用户技术支持人员”在543种职业中仅排在第158位，而“计算机用户支持专家”排在第229位。更令人惊讶的是，年轻人竟然知道有这样的工作。

　　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 be solar-photovoltaic installers and wind-turbine technicians.

　　至少那些想要解决气候变化问题的青少年，就像许多人声称的那样，是幸运的。美国劳工统计局(BLS)预测，未来几年增长最快的两个职业将是太阳能光伏安装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.

　　经合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优异的男女学生势均力敌，但在志向方面，性别差距依然存在。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。这个问题在高等教育中依然存在;除了生物和生物医学科学，STEM学科(科学、技术、工程和数学)的学位都是男性主导的。在美国，女性只获得了35.5%的STEM本科学位和33.7%的博士学位。

　　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.

　　科技行业的情况更糟。在英国，只有五分之一的计算机科学专业大学生是女性，这是一个大问题，因为世界经济论坛预测，在新兴职业中，技术将创造超过四分之一的就业机会。但在一些重要的技术领域，女性的比例偏低;例如，在云计算领域，只有12%的女性。科技行业的某些东西让女性望而却步。

　　9. Women play a much bigger role in the health- and social-care sectors, which are also poised for expansion. 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) had median annual salaries in 2018 of just over $24,000.

　　妇女在保健和社会保健部门发挥更大的作用，这些部门也在扩大。劳工统计局预测，未来几年美国12个增长最快的工作，如职业治疗助理和基因顾问，有8个将在这些领域，。问题是，其中一些工作的薪水并不高。家庭健康和个人护理助理(增长率分别位居第三和第四)2018年的平均年薪略高于2.4万美元。

　　10. Some jobs in health care are extremely lucrative, 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是非常赚钱的。但另一种性别失衡在这里出现:女性仅占美国医疗保健行业高管的三分之一。相比之下，在收入的社会护理劳动力中，女性又是主导。在英国，83%的社会福利工作者是女性。这表明男性回避这个领域，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：没有足够多的有才华的女性进入科技行业，也没有足够多的男性从事社会福利工作。任何经济学家都会认识到，这是一种对资源的低效利用。无论问题的根源在哪里——无论是教育体系、政府政策还是企业招聘实践——都需要加以识别和修正。

　　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于未来的工作有不切实际的幻想。

　　P2—P6：青少年的职业选择问题：第1：大多选择传统职业（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：很少选择目前增长较快的新兴职业，但是乐观的一面是青少年对这些职业是有所了解的（P5—P6）。

　　P7—P10：此次调查发现的另一个问题：性别差距依然存在。

　　P11：总结：劳动力市场的问题可能不是青少年专注于一些众所周知的工作，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簇拥；紧紧环绕；围绕着...而群集；聚集

　　【例句】

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

　　到了维多利亚时代中期，三明治小贩们聚集在每一个工厂门口。

　　wishful thinking 痴心妄想；一厢情愿

　　minutiae/mɪ'njuːʃɪiː/ n. 微小；不重要的细节（minutia的复数）

　　【例句】

　　That the FDP is reduced to horse-trading over such minutiae says a lot about the collapse of this once-grand liberal party.

　　自由民主党（FDP）沦落到在这种细枝末节上讨价还价，这很大程度上体现了这个曾今的伟大的自由政党的沦陷。

　　in-depth /in'depθ/ adj. 深入的,彻底的

　　【例句】

　　It also offers in-depth analysis on major international events. It has a great circulation.

　　同时也就国际上的一些重大事件进行深入的评析。发行量挺大的。

　　settle for无奈接受；勉强同意

　　solar-photovoltaic太阳能光伏

　　wind-turbine风力发电机；风力涡轮机

　　median /'miːdɪən/ n. 中值，中位数；中线adj. 中央的；中值的

　　【例句】

　　Between now and mid-century, Germany's median age will rise to 52.

　　从现在到本世纪中期，德国的中值年龄将上升到52岁。

　　Be poised for准备；蓄势待发

　　lucrative /'luːkrətɪv/ adj. 获利多的, 赚钱的

　　【例句】

　　He decided to turn his hobby into a lucrative sideline.

　　他决定把自己的爱好变成赚钱的副业。

　　注：外刊文章来源：《经济学人》Youngsters’ job preferences and prospects are mismatched