Tracking occupational change

This article was published in the August 2008 South Dakota e-Labor Bulletin.

Although occupational data has been collected in the United States since the 1850 Census of population, the method of classifying occupations has changed significantly.  In 1850, the occupational item included on the Census simply asked respondents to write in the profession, occupation or trade of each person over 15 years of age.  The respondent answers served as the only occupational taxonomy. Occupations ranged from apprentices to learned professions and included bath-house keepers, inventors, lamp-lighters and whitewashers, to name a few. Occupational detail tables were not published until the 1870 census and can be found at http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1870a-17.pdf.

The currently used occupational taxonomy, the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system, was not introduced until 1977.  The SOC system is intended to include all occupations for which work is performed for pay or profit. Even the SOC has gone through continual changes to remain accurate and reflective of occupations in the current labor market.  As with any new taxonomy, there were flaws and omissions in the original SOC.  The system was revised in 1980 in time to be used for tabulations from the 1980 decennial census.   

Continued concerns from 1980 through 2000 about the quality of the U.S. workforce, skills training issues, new and emerging occupations, and changes in occupational structures due to new technology created a need for federal government to ensure the quality of occupational information and statistics.  The occupational taxonomies used by different federal statistical agencies continued to be criticized as being fragmented, incompatible, outdated and lacking information on skills. Many users and producers of occupational data believed it was time to revise the U.S. SOC system to a unified classification structure.

The SOC revision of 2000 created that unified system, which was to be used by federal statistical agencies to classify workers into occupational categories for the purpose of collecting, calculating and disseminating data.  In 2000, the revised Standard Occupational Classification structure was expanded to include over 820 occupations (encompassing private industry, government and the military) according to their occupational definition. Click here to see the 2000 SOC system. To facilitate classification, occupations were combined to form 23 major groups, 96 minor groups and 449 broad occupations. Each broad occupation includes detailed occupations requiring similar job duties, skills, education or experience.

The 2000 SOC revision allowed government agencies and private industry to produce comparable data. Users of occupational data include government program managers, industrial and labor relations practitioners, job seekers, employers wishing to set salary scales or locate an establishment, academic and business researchers, and educational institutions including teachers, guidance counselors and students exploring careers and identifying career education and training alternatives.

The ever changing occupational landscape continues to create a need for new detailed occupations, breaking current detailed occupations into multiple occupations, and consolidating like occupations.   Because of these changes, the Office of Management and Budget formed a Standard Occupational Classification Policy Committee (SOCPC) in 2006 to begin researching necessary changes to the SOC structure.  They were tasked with identifying new and emerging occupations to be added, as well as occupations that could be eliminated or consolidated with others.  The recommendations of this committee will be implemented in the revised 2010 Standard Occupational Classification system.  On May 22, 2008, the SOCPC recommendations were published in the form of a Federal Register notice seeking public comment on the proposed changes to the SOC. 

Below are a few of the proposed changes to be included in the 2010 SOC taxonomy revision. In the 2000 SOC code revision there were several occupations added to the minor occupational group computer and mathematical science occupations, specifically for computer science occupations. However, because of the continually changing technology and new and emerging occupations, there is a need for even more detailed occupations within this minor occupational group for computer and information technology occupations.  The SOCPC has restructured this entire broad occupational group; the table below shows the proposed changes in this area. 

Registered nurse is one of a handful of detailed occupations the committee has proposed breaking into multiple detailed occupations.   Nurse anesthetists, nurse practitioners and nurse midwives have always been included as part of the detailed occupation registered nurses, because they are all registered nurses by primary training.  The basic educational requirements have not changed to obtain employment in these areas; however, because of the growing number of people who work in these different occupations, the additional training required and the differences in the wages paid, it is necessary to break them into individual detailed occupations to enable the statistical agencies to provide better occupational and wage information.  Below is a table illustrating the differences between the 2000 SOC and the 2010 SOC for this occupational area.

Printing workers is another minor occupational group that has been recommended for several changes by the SOCPC.  The committee is recommending consolidating some occupations within this minor group, which should more accurately reflect the work these workers perform.  For example, bookbinders, who perform highly skilled finishing operations, are combining with bindery workers within a new occupation titled print finishing and binding workers.   This has been necessitated by technology, as machines have been developed which can perform the skilled finishing operations of bookbinders.  The table below illustrates the proposed changes for this minor group.

As we can see by some of the proposed changes above, the occupational taxonomy is still changing as technology and economic situations warrants, just as they did from 1850 to 1977.  You can no longer find a spot to classify hucksters, hostlers or bell-founders, but some occupations such as teachers, nurses and lawyers seem to be timeless.  Thanks to efforts to keep the SOC system up-to-date and reflective of the current workforce, we will continue to be able to track trends in occupational employment.