This study, commissioned by the Educational Guidance Service for Adults (EGSA) in Northern Ireland (NI), attempts to capture the current return to the economy of the investment in career/educational guidance services provided to the adult population by EGSA.(EGSA has been in existence in Northern Ireland for 40 years). This report explores EGSA and the services it provides. The research results clearly show the significant positive contribution that EGSA makes to Northern Ireland both in terms of labour market outcomes and economic impact. EGSA's headline annual economic contribution is estimated to be:

Labour market outcomes:

• 580 clients progressing in work/being promoted

• 270 clients not being promoted but having higher productivity due to enrolling on a course

• 20 clients from full-time education starting a new job

• 770 clients not in employment or full-time education starting a new job.

Economic impact:

• 800 more people in employment, contributing £26m in wages and profits (GVA) and £12m in net tax revenue (sum of income tax, national insurance, corporation tax and social security benefits saved). This translates into £9.02 net additional tax revenue for every £1 of public money invested in guidance services today. In terms of relativities to NI aggregates, the economic impact equates to 0.10% of both NI total employment and GVA.

This is an expert paper commissioned jointly by the EC and OECD for the international review of policies for career guidance initiated by the OECD in 2001. The author examines the demand for career guidance and  the nature of supply and incentives to enhance both the quantity and the quality of supply of career guidance.   Market-making examines how markets function. The ways they are likely to fail in the provision of certain types of career guidance leads to the identification of a series of market failures - ways in which laissez-faire policies are likely to lead to inadequate or inaccurate career guidance, or to inequities in access, or to an absence of markets where potential demanders and suppliers can come to some agreement. Different countries have developed policies to counteract such failures.

 In the end, career guidance may be perceived as an adjunct to career-oriented forms of education and training, including professional forms of higher education, and more broadly to policies intended to improve the flexibility and efficiency of labor markets. This is just as true for emerging countries, or countries just moving to market-oriented labor markets and to educational institutions operating in markets such as China.

In response to a recommendation from the pan-Canadian Symposium, the CRWG launched, in the fall of 2004, a preliminary study to learn more about how Canadian providers of career services evaluate the impact of their services. The main goal of the research was to explore the current state of practice in Canada in order to create shared understandings of evaluation procedures currently being used as well as the desired outcomes for career development practices. Specifically, the CRWG set out to learn about:

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The products of this research are presented in this report, which contains five major sections. Chapter 2 provides a brief synthesis of recent research on the efficacy of career development interventions. In Chapter 3, the methods employed for collecting and analyzing the data are described. Chapter 4 provides a summary of the key findings for each of the research target groups. Conclusions, recommendations and an overview of the proposed research agenda to follow from this work are included in Chapter 5.