This is a report of the first year of a three-year project entitled "Vocations: the link between post-compulsory education and the labour market." The project's aim is to research how pathways can be improved within education, within work, and between education and work. There are three strands in the project; the first strand is researching entry-level vocational education and training (VET), particularly VET in Schools; the second is researching the role of educational institutions in tertiary education in fostering vocations; and the third is researching how to improve flows within work and how to improve occupational pathways and vocations within the labour market. This report outlines Strand 3's initial findings. The research seeks to understand the presence of vocational pathways in core sectors of the Australian labour market--agriculture, financial services, engineering and trades, and healthcare and community services. A vocation emerges from fields of practice where there are commonalities; for example, the commonalities between nursing, aged care and childcare. A vocation groups together related clusters of knowledge and skills that allow individuals to progress and/or specialise within a field of practice or to move laterally into linked occupations. The key finding from this analysis is that enabling vocational pathways is not simply about promoting articulation pathways within education and building a more highly qualified workforce. Rather, the greater issue is one of how employers recruit, develop and promote skills in their organisation and in markets. Given these diverse settings, we suggest that a uniform policy approach would not be possible for supporting vocational pathways in different areas of the economy. Moreover, any differentiated policy response would need to integrate elements of not only educational policy, but also industrial relations, industry and other economic policies, all of which have direct and indirect effects on labour market demand and supply. Appended are: (1) Optimal Matching Analysis; (2) Vocational cluster trajectories; and (3) Additional descriptive table. (Contains 9 figures, 9 tables, and 11 footnotes.)