This article explores policy arguments for the re-actualization of work experience placement (WEP) as a career education and guidance (CEG) activity in Sweden and Denmark through analysis of problematizations and assumptions that underpin its re-actualization as a CEG activity in the two countries. The exploration focuses on core policy documents that widened the right to WEP in Denmark in 2017/18 and reintroduced mandatory WEP in Sweden in 2018. The results show that WEP was actualized by a problematization of the decline in applications for upper secondary vocational education (VET) and accompanying concerns regarding the supply of competences needed by the labour market. The decline was assumed to be due to young people’s lack of interest in VET. This, in turn, was attributed to their lack of knowledge and contact with the world of work and insufficient preparation in compulsory schools to enable them to make informed educational and vocational choices. The ability of the policies that address WEP to reach the goal of increasing young people’s interest in VET is questioned and social justice concerns are raised. It is argued that isolated WEP events do not necessarily increase young people’s interest in, or knowledge of, VET. Instead, WEP must be embedded in a systematic and coherent CEG program that can support expansion of the space of valued occupational options.