The career hopes and dreams of young people in the UK are at odds with the types of jobs available, a study from the charity Education and Employers warns.

The report, Disconnected: Career aspirations and jobs in the UK, is based on a survey of 7,000 teenagers.

Also using data from the Office for National Statistics, the charity found the greatest excess of aspiration related to jobs in art and culture, entertainment and sport, where five times as many 17- and 18-year-olds want to work (15.6%) compared with the projected demand in the economy (3.3%).

And for most of those (51%), this was the only sector in which they expressed an interest.

The analysis suggests the greatest shortfall of interest is in accommodation and catering, which needs "almost seven times as many students (9.7% of the economy) as are expressing an interest (1.5%)". It also says: "Wholesale and retail trade similarly sees a very large shortfall - 2.6% expressing interest against 15.1% required."

The report says young people's aspirations are set early - as young as age seven - and do not change enough over time to meet demand. And this consistency of young peoples' career choices throughout their teenage years (and the frustrations and wasted energy it produces) will need significant effort to resolve.

The research says young people's career aspirations need to "be engaged with and, if necessary, constructively challenged", recommending that a "concerted effort" is needed to address what it calls an aspiration-reality disconnect.

The report says: "From age seven, we need to ensure that children get to meet a range of people from different backgrounds and doing different jobs. We need to stop children ruling out options because they believe, implicitly or explicitly, that their future career choices are limited by their gender, ethnicity or socio-economic background.

When young people were asked in 2011 about the careers they wanted, the most popular ambitions were for jobs such as doctors, vets, firefighters, police officers, nurses, teachers and actors.

But the Office for National Statistics has gone back and found a reality gap with what really happened to their lives six years later.

Apart from those who aimed to go into teaching, less than one in 50 were in the career they had wanted.

• Only 1.4% had got jobs in the media or arts, such as a producer, actor or writer
• Only 1.7% were in jobs such as the police or emergency services
• Only about 1.7% became health professionals, such as dentists or pharmacists

The most typical jobs for these people in their twenties included:

• sales assistants and cashiers
• caring and personal services
• teaching and education-related
• sales and marketing
• administration

They were also earning less than they had expected. About one in 20 expected to be earning £80,000 by the age of 30 - but the ONS projects average earnings of less than £24,000.