Apart from employment agencies – which tend to focus narrowly on job placement and to include only limited elements of wider career guidance – there are two main career guidance services where market-based service delivery has become well-established.  The first is the publication of career information and other career guidance materials (including career education resources and psychometric tests). Such publications may be funded by charges to consumers, by advertising, by government subsidy, or by a mix of these sources. Significant factors in supporting the market are the low unit costs, and the relative ease with which standardised products can be distributed to a mass market, in comparison with such interventions as career interviews (OECD, 2004).

The only area of personalised career guidance service delivery in which a substantial market has developed is outplacement agencies. In Australia, for example, it is estimated that there are some 250 agencies of this kind (OECD, 2004). Significant here is the fact that such services are normally paid for by employers, which seem more willing than individuals to pay for the services at rates capable of sustaining a market. Outplacement is an area where employers are willing to pay for genuinely impartial career guidance, since their sole interest is in the employee leaving on positive terms: they have no interest in the content of the individual’s decision.

In some countries there has been a limited development of career guidance services paid by individuals. Examples include Australia, Canada, the USA and some European countries (notably Germany, the Netherlands and the UK). Information on the extent of these markets is limited (see OECD, 2004, chp. 8). In general, however, it seems that individuals are reluctant to pay for such services – or at least reluctant to do so at full-cost rather than marginal-cost rates. It is as yet unclear whether this is a transitional problem, based on the fact that many such services have been free of charge and it takes time for users to adapt to market-based provision; or whether it is a systemic problem, based on the difficulties in treating career guidance as a commodity in the ways a market would require (Watts, 1999; see also Grubb, 2004). As a general rule, it seems that many private-sector career guidance services are paid for not by the individual end-user but either by the state (through contracting-out – see above) or by employers (as in the case of outplacement services, for example). Services paid for by individuals may then be added on a marginal-cost basis to services financed in these other ways.