Young people today have an overwhelming number of choices about life after high school, but too many still need better information or sustained support to confidently assess and determine what’s next. A study from Britebound and Jobs for the Future (JFF) found that 65% of Generation Z students fear that that they will choose the wrong postsecondary path. These concerns are valid: Career decisions have long-lasting ramifications, with JFF’s American Job Quality Study finding that just 29% of people aged 18 to 24 and 40% of workers overall currently hold quality jobs. High school students attending college in the fall could need to borrow up to $43,000 in financial aid, according to one analysis, despite the unemployment rate for recent college graduates aged 22 to 27 rising from 4.2% to 5.6% over the past two years.
These statistics show why career navigation systems matter. At the Britebound Center for Career Navigation at JFF, we believe young people need access to qualified individuals like career counselors or coaches who can help them clarify their goals, acquire critical skills, and choose from available postsecondary education and training programs. While these decisions are personal, they are not made in isolation. State policy plays an important role in shaping whether young people can access the advice, information, and experiences they need to explore options and choose the path that is right for them.
The center tracks how states are strengthening their career navigation systems. Our review of state-level legislation proposed and enacted in 2026 shows that most new policies are designed to expand access to career navigation practitioners or career exploration opportunities. While encouraging, these isolated proposals will not create the kind of coherent, well-funded systems that effectively support all young people. States need a broader strategy that includes a shared vision for career navigation and a clear understanding of existing services and supports.
In this post, we provide an overview of state legislative activity related to career navigation and personalized career guidance since January 2026. We then highlight how state leaders in Louisiana are working to assess current policies for personalized career guidance for young people and identify areas for improvement—an approach that could usefully guide other states in 2027 and beyond.
State Trends in Career Navigation
Utilizing search terms like career navigation, advising, exploration, awareness, and counseling, our policy team surfaced 332 state proposals by the end of May in the 2026 session. Within this pool, we closely reviewed each proposal to identify those that were substantively related to our state policy agenda to improve personalized career guidance for people aged 16 to 24. This process resulted in 135 proposals from 31 states that aligned with our policy goals. The table below provides an overview of the center’s career navigation policy recommendations, the number of 2026 state-level proposals that align with each, and example proposals or enacted reforms (see Table 1).
Table 1. State Policy Proposals that Align with the Center’s State Policy Agenda in 2026
| Center’s State Policy Recommendations | Number of 2026 Proposals | Examples |
| Craft a statewide vision for career navigation that emphasizes multiple pathways to career success and focuses on cross-system collaboration and innovation. | 4 | Minnesota H.F.3650 would require state agencies to establish a statewide framework to align personalized learning plans, career and technical education (CTE), work-based learning, and postsecondary exploration (proposed). Hawaii S.R.131 mandates the state’s Workforce Development Council develop a comprehensive statewide workforce strategy which would include how the state can invest in robust career counseling infrastructure (enacted). |
| Review existing career navigation services and supports across the state to improve, integrate, and align efforts for providing high-quality personalized guidance to young people ages 16 to 24. | 10 | Washington S.B.6325 would require the Washington State Institute for Public Policy to conduct a study to review higher education student services including optimal counselor-to-student ratios (proposed). North Carolina S.579 would establish the North Carolina High School Redesign Commission to examine career exploration opportunities and personalized pathways for students, among other things (proposed). |
| Invest in and expand access to career navigation practices that can provide high-quality personalized guidance, regardless of setting. | 37 | Utah S.B.8 appropriated $7.3 million for college and career coaching for high school students (enacted). Minnesota H.F.2441 would appropriate $500,000 for rural career counselors in each of the next two years (proposed). Ohio H.B.59 would modify professional development requirements for career counselors that support students in grades seven through 12 to improve their ability to engage employers (proposed). |
| Integrate technology tools or platforms into practitioners’ interactions with students so that they take a people-centered, technology-enabled approach to personalized guidance. | 7 | Tennessee S.B.2448 would require schools to integrate digital platforms and assessments that provide personalized career exploration into their CTE programs (proposed). North Carolina S.986 would appropriate $1.5 million to update and maintain NC Careers, the state’s career navigation technology platform (proposed). |
| Adopt quality standards for career counseling and advising across systems and invest in professional development to effectively implement best practices. | 1 | Ohio S.B.328 would establish a career coaching framework that provides practitioners with indicators of quality career coaching sessions and guidance to schools and districts on how to utilize the framework (proposed). |
| Incentivize cross-system collaboration on providing career navigation services and supports. | 2 | Massachusetts H.637 would establish a Workforce Skills Cabinet to develop a plan to expand college- and career-pathway programs for students, including monitoring how students receive career counseling in high school (proposed). Washington S.B.5841 mandates collaboration between the state’s higher education and K-12 agencies to ensure postsecondary financial aid information is included in student advising plans (enacted). |
| Expand career exploration, exposure, and engagement opportunities, including for young people outside of K-12 settings. | 75 | Ohio S.B.328 would expand career exploration offerings for middle-school students that would inform their individual advising plans in high school (proposed). Louisiana H.B.268 would improve the implementation of middle-school career exploration activities by requiring that schools incorporate quality elements (enacted). |
| Build the research base on effective career navigation approaches by funding rigorous evaluations and implementation studies. | 0 | Our scan did not surface any proposals to build the research base on effective career navigation approaches. |
The two most common policy approaches we found included investing in career navigation practitioners, such as counselors, advisors, and career coaches, and expanding career exploration opportunities so that young people can better understand their interests and focus their interactions with these practitioners:
- The most common approach, with 75 proposals, would bolster opportunities for young people by creating new requirements to explore careers in middle school courses or appropriating additional funds for education and workforce programs that help young people explore careers in different settings.
- The second-most common approach, with 37 proposals, would expand access to high-quality personalized career guidance by creating new advising programs, appropriating funds for existing programs, or establishing broader education or workforce programs that incorporate advising alongside other components.
Our review found far fewer proposals related to other critical components of a modern career navigation system. Only seven proposals focused on expanding access to personalized guidance through technology tools or platforms that can augment in-person advising via job boards, career-assessment tools, resume builders, and other features. Even fewer proposals addressed quality standards for practitioners, professional development, or the cross-system alignment of advising supports.
This gap suggests that many states are not yet taking a comprehensive approach to strengthening their career navigation systems across K-12, postsecondary, workforce, and community settings. For example, new funding for personalized career guidance may expand access, but it is less likely to drive results without clear quality standards and stronger system coordination.
States that want to advance a fuller career navigation agenda could start by establishing a common statewide vision or reviewing the services and supports they already offer. Only four states proposed a new statewide vision for career navigation, either through a dedicated career coaching framework or through broader education and workforce goals that include counseling or advising. Ten states proposed partial reviews of the systems targeting education and workforce populations, including Washington, which plans to examine postsecondary student supports, and North Carolina, which proposed to study career exploration programs for secondary students.
Deep Dive: Louisiana’s 2026 Reforms Expand Access to Career Exploration and Personalized Guidance
Legislators in Louisiana acted to expand and improve the quality of career exploration, expand the placement of career coaches in middle schools and high schools to help students develop their required individualized graduation plans, and build a statewide strategy for advising.
Governor Jeff Landry signed into law a bipartisan proposal authored by State Representative Kim Carver that aims to improve career exploration opportunities for middle schoolers. The state currently requires schools to provide six exploration activities at each grade level each year, but some school districts may either fail to offer these activities or offer them in a way that is not fully integrated and aligned with other supports. Under the new law, at least three activities need to meet certain qualifying criteria, such as direct interaction with an employer, exposure to a work-based learning environment, or completing a career interest inventory to assess how their interests may match with specific jobs. These activities would need to align with high-demand sectors with significant employment needs in the state to the greatest extent possible, and at least one activity would need to be documented in each student’s mandatory individual graduation plan to inform future advising sessions. These reforms would ensure that the state’s middle school career exploration activities are geared towards employer needs and better integrated with the services and supports that each student receives as they progress into high school.
A second bipartisan proposal introduced by State Senator Mike Reese and signed by the governor allows for career coaches to support middle and high school students in developing their individualized graduation plans. As of 2026, Louisiana allowed school counselors to assist students with completion, but they were often stretched thin by competing priorities and large student-to-counselor ratios. Louisiana’s Department of Education is now expected to publish a list of high-quality career coaching vendors by January 2027 from which schools can hire individuals, while schools can participate in cost-sharing arrangements through regional consortia to fil these roles. As K-12 systems face ongoing challenges meeting capacity needs and handling competing priorities, state leaders can address specific gaps by introducing additional practitioners with defined roles and unique expertise, such as stronger knowledge of and connections to the state workforce’s supportive services or employers.
Additionally, State Senator Rick Edmonds introduced SCR 65 to create the K-12 student success pathways task force, charged with designing a statewide advising strategy. This resolution passed both chambers of the legislature and was enacted. The task force would examine how career exploration, individual graduation plans, and postsecondary transition supports are currently implemented. Task force members, who would include a mix of education and workforce leaders, would also evaluate counseling staffing models and develop recommendations to align K-12 supports to the state’s workforce and postsecondary goals.
This task force builds on a current cross-sector task force on career alignment in Louisiana that is conducting similar work at the postsecondary level. Increasingly, state leaders recognize that advisors do not necessarily have the capacity to currently meet the distinct needs of all students. Students at the K-12 level interested in non-degree career pathways, for example, may be unaware of quality career options. This K-12 task force can help state leaders build on the progress of these recently enacted proposals, better understand the state’s K-12 counseling challenges, and identify solutions that are responsive to both current capacity constraints and youth needs.
More to Come
State legislators still have time during the 2026 sessions to advance critical career navigation reforms that clearly and intentionally meet the needs of young people. And with new policy leaders taking office across the country next year, the candidates expecting to take office in 2027 should also consider policies to deliberately ensure all young people have access to personalized career guidance. Our center will continue to monitor and assess these proposals as state leaders introduce and debate them.
If you are interested in learning more, the Britebound Center for Career Navigation at JFF previously highlighted enacted reforms from 2025 and promising proposals from the start of the 2026 session. The center’s 50-state scan further shows which states have already adopted key policies essential for building effective career navigation systems. An updated version will be released at the beginning of next year, which will show a more comprehensive picture of how states are helping young people make informed decisions about their education and career goals. Want to learn more? You can join our center’s Career Navigation Stakeholder Network or follow our policy insights through our newsletter here.
