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This chapter begins with a review of earlier research into the linkage between educational credentials and career beginnings, suggesting that this research had concluded that the extent to which occupational destinations depend on occupational origins seems remarkably stable over time and between countries and that constancy, not change, in the strength of this association is the dominant pattern. Next, this particular research study is set in its institutional context in Australia over the period 1965 to 1985. A section follows on data sources and definition variables. The chapter concludes with the findings of the study: that the worsening labour market in the 1970s and 1980s had detrimental effects on the early job status of Australian school leavers; that tertiary qualifications serve to control entry into the service classes of a modern industrial society like Australia; that for blue collar workers formal vocational qualifications govern entry into the aristocracy of labour; and that persons who enter the labour market with no more than the socially required minimum of education are disproportionately likely to start their working lives as semi-skilled or unskilled labourers. One obvious implication of these findings is that lifetime education leading to a vocational qualification should provide an effective class mobility channel for those who failed to obtain one earlier in life.