Relevance: university graduates are expected to meet permanently changing requirements of the modern labor market in connection with their competency, which includes both professional and personal skills. Such context actualizes the research issue, devoted to academic motivation as a predictor of career orientations in diff erent groups of university students, namely in groups of students with diff erent job involvement, i.e. those who have real work experience and those who do not have such experience. The objective of the study isto analyze the correlation between scales of academic motivation, indicators of professional time temporal prospects, and career orientations in groups of employed and unemployed students. The study hypothesizes that the correlation between motivation and indicators of career orientations will diff er in groups of working and non-working students. Participants: N=200 aged 18 to 25 (M = 21.48, SD = 1.7; 42 males, 158 females), including 147 students combining work and study, 53 students just studying (Moscow). Methods (tools): The Academic Motivation Scale (T. O. Gordeeva) was used to identify the level of academic motivation; the questionnaire “Career Anchors” (Edgar Schein, adaptation by V. A. Chiker and V. E. Vinokurova) was used to analyze career orientations; the technique “Occupational Future Time Perspective” (by H. Zacher and M. Frese, adaptation by T. Y. Bazarov, A.V. Paramuzov) was used to assess the professional time temporal perspective of the future. Results: the study has revealed a set of correlations between academic motivation and career planning in the two groups of university students who diff er in the criterion of combining study and work, which confi rms the hypothesis of the study. Main conclusions: diff erences in the structure of the correlation between academic motivation and career planning indicators in groups of employed and unemployed students have been revealed. The results show that working students tend to have a broader career planning horizon due to their real work experience, while non-working respondents are not confi dent about their own competence and the compliance of their own knowledge with the real job requirements. Practical significance: the results obtained can be used in the development of psychological support programs for university students.