History of Career Counseling

Career counseling, or vocational guidance as it was originally known, has a long history within the counseling professions. Career counseling was born in the United States in the latter 19th century out of societal upheaval, transition, and change. This new profession was described by historians as a progressive social reform movement aimed at eradicating poverty and substandard living conditions that had been created by the rapid industrialization and consequent migration of people to major urban centers at the turn of the 20th century. 

The social upheaval in the United States that gave birth to career counseling was characterized by a host of economic issues: the loss of jobs in the agricultural sector, increasing demands for workers in heavy industry, the loss of permanent jobs on the family farm to new emerging technologies such as tractors, the increasing urbanization of the United States, and the concomitant calls for services to meet this internal migration pattern—all this in order to retool for the new industrial economy. 

Returning veterans from World War I and those displaced by their return also heightened the need for career counseling. Frank Parsons was the founder and the father of the Career Counseling. Parsons established a settlement house program for young people either already employed or currently unemployed who had been displaced during this period of rapid change.