Measuring Perceived Employability for Sustainable Careers Among Mapuche Indigenous Professionals in Chile

Perceived employability, an indicator of sustainable employability, has rarely been examined among professionals whose labor-market position is shaped by ethnically based structural disadvantage. This study evaluated the Self-Perceived Employability Scale in 544 employed, university-educated Mapuche professionals in Chile. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a two-factor structure (external and internal employability) over a one-factor model. A ten-item version showed the best fit among the solutions examined, and bifactor diagnostics supported the total score, whose reliability was good (ω = 0.87), as the principal indicator. Partial scalar invariance across sex was supported, so the latent means of women and men can be compared. Men scored about 0.2 standard deviations higher on the external facet, a small difference that was not robust and could not be distinguished from that on the internal facet. Scores correlated with subjective career success and with current household socioeconomic position, but not with anticipated household socioeconomic mobility. Although the design was cross-sectional and the sample non-probabilistic, the ten-item version offers a brief and usable measure for research and organizational practice with Mapuche professionals and a sound basis for its application in other Indigenous and ethnically minoritized professional populations, where replication and longitudinal designs will extend this evidence.