First established in 2002, the National Career Clusters Framework serves as a guide for schools and industry partners for career technical education (CTE) programs. Supported by Advance CTE, the framework provides a shared structure and language for CTE program design across the United States. In fall 2024, a new framework was released, “designed to serve as a bridge between education and work and a central building block for consistently designed and high-quality CTE programs.”
An introductory video to the new framework begins, “The world of work has changed dramatically and continues to transform; the world of learning must respond. Twenty years ago, many of these careers did not exist and other existing careers now require a new set of skills.”
The framework was modernized to reflect the interdisciplinary nature of work, aiming to remove silos within and across career clusters, update language and groupings to better bridge industry’s organization of work with education and to include modern sectors, skills and approaches to the modern world of work, while providing flexibility for future needs.
The modern framework consists of 14 clusters and 72 sub-clusters that serve as the primary organizing structures for CTE programs. These structures are supported by five cluster groupings aligned to purpose and impact of included careers, and three cross-cutting clusters that provide both skills and careers that can stand alone and intersect with all other clusters. Additionally, 12 career-ready practices are included to ensure that every program includes the skills that are essential to every career and life.
A brief breakdown of each component:
- Clusters: Industry sectors as defined by groupings from Standard Occupational Classification and North American Industry Classification System codes.
- Advanced Manufacturing
- Construction
- Supply Chain & Transportation
- Arts, Entertainment, & Design
- Hospitality, Events, & Tourism
- Financial Services
- Education
- Healthcare & Human Services
- Public Service & Safety
- Agriculture
- Energy & Natural Resources
- Digital Technology
- Marketing & Sales
- Management & Entrepreneurship
- Sub-clusters: Major groupings of career areas within a given field that have similar skills as defined by industry area.
- Cluster groupings: Large purpose-driven meta-sectors that help guide young people toward Clusters that are aligned with their interests, their sense of purpose, and the impact they want to make on their communities.
- Cross-cutting clusters: Clusters that are based on both sector-specific and contextualized functions instead of purely discrete industry sectors. These clusters have both sub-clusters and implications for courses taken in all other career clusters.
- Career-ready practices: Built on a meta-analysis of over 30 different listings of general professional skills developed by industry and educational institutions, these practices represent the skills needed to succeed in the modern workplace. The framework recommends these practices be embedded across the pre-kindergarten to workforce continuum. Read the full list of career-ready practices.
Using the framework
The new website features a section to explore how each stakeholder in the CTE community can use the framework and includes state leaders, industry and workforce development professionals, local CTE administrators, CTE instructors, school counselors and career-advising professionals and CTE student organizations and national partners.
The framework aims to provide a consistent architecture for:
- CTE program design: Provides course content and sequencing, state-approved and local CTE programs and resources for alignment across secondary, postsecondary and workforce systems.
- Industry alignment and collaboration: Provides labor market information, priorities for work-based learning experiences, common terminology across CTE programs, communications for local advisory boards and postings for jobs, apprenticeships, internships and other experiences.
- Career exploration and advising: Provides content for career interest and aptitude surveys, an organizing structure for career exposure and exploration activities and an evaluation tool for work-based learning content and curricular alignment.
- Administration and staffing: Provides CTE educator credentialing guidelines, an organizing structure for cluster-based staff positions and alignment with CTE student organizations.
