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Career clusters help students investigate careers and design their courses of study to advance their career goals. For this reason, Virginia has adopted the nationally accepted structure of career clusters, career pathways and sample career specialties or occupations.

A career cluster is a grouping of occupations and broad industries based on commonalities. Within each career cluster, there are multiple career pathways that represent a common set of skills and knowledge, both academic and technical, necessary to pursue a full range of career opportunities within that pathway – ranging from entry level to management, including technical and professional career specialties.

Below are the seventeen career clusters recognized by the Virginia Department of Education:

• Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources

• Architecture and Construction

• Arts, Audio/Video Technology and Communications

• Business Management and Administration

• Education and Training

• Energy

• Finance

• Government and Public Administration

• Health Science

• Hospitality and Tourism

• Human Services

• Information Technology

• Law, Public Safety, Corrections and Security

• Manufacturing

• Marketing

• Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

• Transportation, Distribution and Logistics

Click below for more resources.

• Fort Defiance High School Career Coach

• Career Clusters and Pathways (pdf)

• Valley Career Hub 

• Invest in What's Next, Life After High School 

• Virginia Education Wizard 

• O*Net Online Career Exploration