What are Career Clusters?

Have you ever heard someone say they want to work in Health Care and wondered exactly what they mean?

Do they want to become a doctor or a nurse? 

Do they want to be a hospital administrator or work in a medical research lab? 

Are they interested in maintaining and repairing biomedical equipment or becoming a medical librarian? 

All of these jobs are part of a career cluster.

Career clusters provide a way to examine occupations related to broad career areas. 

Career clusters are a tool for: 

• grouping together careers and specific occupations that are related to broad industry classifications
• helping educators and industry representatives to define career pathways
• identifying the knowledge, skills and abilities people need to be successful in a cluster.

Career clusters help:

• ensure that what you learn in school is relevant to a career interest and
• to prepare you for success in college and the workplace.

The U.S. Department of Education established 16 career clusters that encompass all career occupations. Each cluster includes:

• A list of sample career specialties and occupations,
• A description of different career pathways related to the cluster and
• Categories of knowledge and skills common to all occupations in the cluster.

Career Pathways

Occupations in each career cluster are grouped in two or more career pathways.

 Career pathway: a subset of occupations within a cluster that are related to each other by knowledge and skills they have in common.

Changing occupations between career pathways is easier than between career clusters.

The knowledge and skills needed for one career are similar to those for a new occupation in that pathway.

Example: a Legal Assistant’s knowledge and skills are more similar to a Detective than to a Physical Therapy Assistant. They are in the same cluster - Law, Public Safety and Security – but different pathways.

Both need knowledge of law and legal procedures. A PTA must know anatomy, physiology, and medical procedures. It is more difficult to move from Legal Asst. to a PTA job than to a career as a Detective.

The Career Clusters and Pathways of SEHS