This fun interactive from Flowing Data offers the chance to explore with your students how and why age affects occupation.  The first section offers a basic overview of the top 3 occupations for each age group, giving a nice opportunity for introductory discussion before digging deep into the infographic.  Before opening up the interactive or sharing the link, try brainstorming some of those top jobs with your students.

1. What do you think are the most common jobs for those under 30?
2. How about those from ages 30-59?
3. And what would you guess are the top jobs for those aged 60+?

Discuss the rationale behind your answers:

1. Did we brainstorm the same jobs in each or multiple categories?  
2. If they were different, why were they different?  
3. What makes something a "young person job" or an "old person job," anyways?

Now that we've made some predictions, let's jump into the interactive and see how we did.  Are there any answers that surprise you?

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Let's dig a little deeper.  By scrolling down you can see the rank for different jobs across age groups.  Each column shows a different age group and the horizontal lines across the graph show the rank of a particular occupation for that group.  The higher the line on the chart the more common that job is for the group.  In the example below, Dental Assistant is a much more common job for young workers, peaking in the 21-25 age group and becoming less common as workers get older.

Have your students scroll down to the search part of the infographic.  They can access the rankings for each occupation one of two ways.  1. They can type a job into the search box.  2. They can roll their mouse over the infographic to highlight a particular job.  Encourage your students to check out at least three occupations.

Ask each student to pick a job and analyze how age affects the popularity of that occupation.  They should think about which particular age groups gravitate towards or away from the job as well as any general trends they might notice.  Survey your students.  How many picked a job that was more popular with younger workers?  How about middle age workers, or older workers?  Did anyone pick an occupation that was about even among the different age groups?

Ask your students to explain their findings.  Volunteers could share out (1) which occupation they picked, (2) what they noticed about the data, and  (3) why they think that job is common or uncommon among particular groups. 

If you still have time and want to go further look at the final section, Jobs Most Specific To Age Groups.  For this section try pairing or grouping your students and assigning each group to one of the age groups.  Ask them to consider all 5 jobs together.  

1. What do those jobs have in common that might make them popular among that age group?  
2. Are there any that stand out and, if so, what other factors might explain the popularity of that job?

Time to wrap up the discussion - did they see any jobs that they might someday want?  If so, what was it about those jobs that they find appealing? 

Happy job hunting.

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Looking for more engaging interactives? Our Interactive Library has tons of great interactives and great activity worksheets too!

About the Author

Greg Livingston

Greg comes to us from a big Canadian family full of passionate educators: the joy of teaching and learning has always been an important part of his experience. He saw first hand the need for personal finance education after having his student research careers and create a budget in his computers class. His students would not stop telling him how important this project was, even years later. Greg brings his unique experience designing and managing online learning communities for Columbia University, Connected Camps, and others to the Next Gen team. He is excited to connect with great teachers and support them in their challenging and rewarding work. Greg is a proud jack of all trades - outside of work he likes to play soccer and hockey, make music, read old books, and explore the great outdoors.