This article is about the Standard Occupational Classification System (SOC) used in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Similar SOC systems are used in other countries including the UKhttp://www.statistics.gov.uk/methods_quality/ns_sec/soc2000.asphttp://www.statistics.gov.uk/methods_quality/soc/structure.asp, Canadahttp://www.statcan.ca/english/concepts/occupation.htm, Spainhttp://www.ine.es/clasifi/cnoh.htm, the Philippineshttp://www.nscb.gov.ph/csd/psoc1.asp, and Singaporehttp://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/ssc/ssoc.html

The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) System is a United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 government system of classifying occupation

Profession

A profession is a vocation founded upon specialized educational training, the purpose of which is to supply disinterested counsel and service to others, for a direct and definite compensation, wholly apart from expectation of other business gain....

s. It was developed in response to a growing need for a universal occupational classification system. Such a classification system would allow government agencies and private industry to produce comparable data. Users of occupational data include government program managers, industrial and labor relations practitioners, students considering career training, job seekers, vocational training schools, and employers wishing to set salary scales or locate a new plant. It will be used by all federal agencies collecting occupational data, providing a means to compare occupational data across agencies. It is designed to cover all occupations in which work is performed for pay or profit, reflecting the current occupational structure in the United States. The USA's SOC was recently revised, and is now known as the 2010 SOC, which includes 840 occupational types. The national variants of the SOC are used by the governments of the UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, and many others.

Categories

• Management occupations
• Business and financial operations occupations
• Computer and mathematical occupations
• Architecture and engineering occupations
• Life, physical, and social science occupations
• Professional gambling occupations
• Community and social services occupations
• Legal occupations
• Education, training, and library occupations
• Arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations
• Healthcare practitioners and technical occupations
• Healthcare support occupations
• Protective service occupations
• Food preparation and serving related occupations
• Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations
• Personal care and service occupations
• Sales and related occupations
• Office and administrative support occupations
• Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations
• Construction and extraction occupations
• Installation, maintenance, and repair occupations
• Production occupations
• Transportation and material moving occupations
• Military specific occupations

See also

• Dictionary of Occupational Titles
  Dictionary of Occupational Titles
  The Dictionary of Occupational Titles, commonly known as the DOT was the creation of the U.S. Employment Service, which used its thousands of occupational definitions to match job seekers to jobs from 1939 to the late 1990s....
  
   (DOT) First Published 1939. Last complete update 1977. Last revised edition published (DOT, 4th ed.) in 1991. Now out of print, the DOT is used only by Administrative Law Judges (as required by statute) to encode physical requirements of occupations to make Occupational Law determinations.
• International Standard Classification of Occupations
  International Standard Classification of Occupations
  The International Standard Classification of Occupations is an International Labour Organization classification structure for organizing information on labour and jobs. It is part of the international family of economic and social classifications of the United Nations...
  
  
• National Occupational Classification (NOC) (in Canada)
• Occupational Information Network
  Occupational Information Network
  The Occupational Information Network is the primary source of occupational information for the United States. O*NET, sponsored by the Employment and Training Administration of the United States Department of Labor, is developed by the National Center for O*NET Development...
  
   (O*NET) Comprehensive information about over 900 occupational categories, including 840 SOC categories and many specialized O*NET-SOC categories.
• Occupational Outlook Handbook
  Occupational Outlook Handbook
  The Occupational Outlook Handbook is a publication of the United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics that includes information about the nature of work, working conditions, training and education, earnings, and job outlook for hundreds of different occupations. The Handbook is...
  
  (OOH) Created and maintained by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

External links

• The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) System