LISS 2025. Authors: Antje Schmitt (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen – Faculteit Gedrags- en Maatschappijwetenschappen), Claudia C. Kitz (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen – Faculteit Gedrags- en Maatschappijwetenschappen).
Crafting sustainable careers describes the process by which employees actively manage their careers to stay happy, healthy, and productive. Yet careers unfold within broader life contexts, and adverse life events (e.g., illness and divorce) can disrupt sustainable career paths. However, robust evidence on how such events shape career trajectories and the career (in)action they trigger remains scarce. Our project fills this gap by combining LISS panel data on sustainable career indicators and life events from 2011–2020 with narrative career reflections from the subsequent years (2021–2026). Grounded in resilience and career self-regulation research and using longitudinal modeling and machine learning, we study whether individuals who maintain sustainable career trajectories despite adversity show more active career behavior, whereas those on declining trajectories exhibit career inaction. The findings will clarify how adversity shapes career behaviors and guide employers, counselors, and policymakers in helping individuals build happy, healthy, and productive careers.
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