LGBTQ Identities and Career Plan Changes in Young Adulthood: Implications for Occupational Segregation and Disparities

Abstract

Many young adults change their career plans after spending some time in the labor force, and those who hold marginalized identities change their plans in unique ways as they respond to unfair treatments in workplaces. Past research on this topic focused on (cisgender) women and people of color, and little is known about how LGBTQ people change their career plans. Furthermore, many LGBTQ youth today develop optimistic views that their sexual and gender identities will not undermine their career opportunities, but the existing literature provides limited information about whether they maintain such views after their transition to the labor force and how they change their career plans if their perceptions of career disadvantages change. To fill these gaps in the literature, the authors analyzed longitudinal data from in-depth interviews with 37 LGBTQ young adults, who were followed over 2 to 10 years at 2-year intervals. The data showed that young LGBTQ workers’ career plan changes were intertwined with their sexual and gender identities. For example, some participants decided to move to more LGBTQ-friendly careers after experiencing workplace harassment and heteronormativity and cisnormativity, and those who had entered careers that allowed them to integrate their LGBTQ identities into work decided to leave the careers because of emotional burnout. Overall, the results suggest that LGBTQ people’s career plan adjustments to identity-related challenges at work operate as a worker-level mechanism that contributes to labor market segregation and financial disparities between LGBTQ and straight, cisgender workers.