1. Collecting Occupations in EU
Results of the questionnaire on occupational data collection

2. Introduction Questionnaire was composed of 3 parts:
Classification and organizational issues
Data collection issues
Transition to ISCO 08
Sent to all MS, Switzerland, Croatia and Turkey
In order to prepare this workshop on the collection of data on occupations, Eurostat has sent a questionnaire to all Member States, Switzerland, Croatia and Turkey, to bring together information on this issue.
The questionnaire was composed of 3 parts:
- Classification and organizational issues
- Data collection issues
- Transition to ISCO 08
The following document summarizes the information collected.

3. Use of ISCO on the data collectionNo
>90%
BE, BG,CZ, EE,
EL, ES, FR, IT, LV,
NL, PL, PT, RO, SI,
SK, FI, SE
Yes
CY,AT, LU,
MT, RS, TR DK
50-90%
DE, IE, LT, UK
< 50%
HU, CH
The majority of the Member States have national versions of occupational classifications which are not very different from the ISCO classification having roughly a matching of more than 90%. Table 1 gives information on the websites where these classifications can be found in the national language.
Germany, Lithuania and United Kingdom estimate that their national classification would have an overlap with ISCO 88 (Com) between 50 and 90% and the Major Groups where the difference would be more important are:
- Major group 1 LEGISLATORS, SENIOR OFFICIALS AND MANAGERS (DE and LT),
- Major group 2 PROFESSIONALS (LT and UK),
- Major group 3 TECHNICIANS AND ASSOCIATE PROFESSIONALS (DE and UK)
- Major group 5 SERVICE WORKERS AND SHOP AND MARKET SALES WORKERS (LT) and
- Major group 9 ELEMENTARY OCCUPATIONS (DE, LT and UK).
Hungary and Switzerland have a national classification rather different from ISCO.
In the case of Hungary their national classification has a good match at the level of Major Groups but not at the level of sub-major groups, sub groups or unit groups where the differences can be considerable.
The Swiss Federal Statistical Office maintains an occupational database which currently contains approximately 19,000 individual unidentifiable occupation codes. For every occupation code, there are occupational texts in German, French and Italian, in each case in the masculine and feminine form. The individual occupation codes are converted into ISCO and the Swiss Standard Classification of Occupations Thus, the ISCO code conversion is not carried out in a roundabout way through the occupational classification. Both classifications are equally valid and for every occupation-related survey conducted by the Federal Statistical Office, the results can be shown based on both classifications.
Belgium and Greece use the ISCO classification in some surveys and a national classification in other surveys.

4. Existence of a service coordinating the implementation of the occupational classification across the different surveys
YES
CZ, DE, EE, EL,
ES, FR, IE, IT, CY, LU,
HU, NL, AT, SK, UK,
CH, RS, TR NO
BE, DK, LV,
LT, MT, PL, PT,
RO, SI, FI, SE
Among the countries having answered the question on the existence of a service coordinating the implementation of the occupational classification across the different surveys, 14 Member States have this kind of service. This is the case also in Switzerland, Turkey and Croatia. In several countries this service is in charge not only of the occupational classification but of all classifications and nomenclatures. Italy has a specific service named ‘Surveys, analysis and classification on occupation’ which is in charge of the issues concerned with occupations. (See table 2).

5. same module of questions common trans-coding programs
Existence of common tools for the collection of data and/or coding on occupation
same module of questions
common trans-coding programs
use of the same experts for the coding of occupation
common checking programs.
YES
BE, DE, EE, EL,
ES, FR, HU, NL, AT,
PT, RO, SI, SK,FI, SE,
UK, RS, TR
Independently of the existence of a service coordinating the implementation of the occupational classification, some countries use common tools for the collection of data and/or coding on occupation for different surveys adapting them for household or enterprise surveys. These common tools take in general the form of a same module of questions to identify the occupation used in the different surveys, common trans-coding programs between the national classification and ISCO, the use of the same experts for the coding of occupation in all surveys or common checking programs.
For those countries using computer assisted data collection (face to face or by telephone) these functions can be integrated in the program used for the data collection. Furthermore they can also include indexes of job titles which can be used in the different surveys, or keywords which facilitate the data collection. Blase is commonly used over Europe and integrates these functions.
The use of these common tools is of course recommended for coherent results on occupation breakdowns over the different statistical domains. (see table 3)

6. Who is the responsible for the occupational classification?
BE, CZ, DK, DE,
EE, EL, ES, FR, IE, IT,
CY, LU, HU, MT, NL,
AT, PT, SI, SK,
FI, SE, UK,
CH, RS, TR
Other
BG - Ministry of Labour
and Social Policy
LV - Ministry of Welfare
LT - Ministry of Social
Security and Labour
PL - Ministry of Labour
RO - Ministry of Labour,
Family and Equal
Opportunities
Among the countries having answered the question on the existence of a service coordinating the implementation of the occupational classification across the different surveys, 14 Member States have this kind of service. This is the case also in Switzerland, Turkey and Croatia. In several countries this service is in charge not only of the occupational classification but of all classifications and nomenclatures. Italy has a specific service named ‘Surveys, analysis and classification on occupation’ which is in charge of the issues concerned with occupations. (See table 2).

7. Existence of a socio - economic classification
Most of the Member States do not have a Socio-economic classification.
Only eight MS (DK, EE, FR, IE, PT, FI, SE and UK) and Switzerland have this kind of classification.
The French, Portuguese and the Swedish socio-economic classifications are not based on occupation.

8. How data on occupations is collected - LFS
Asking job title
Asking self description
BE, DE, AT, FI, CH
BG,CZ,EE, FR, IT, CY, LV, LT, LU, MT, RO, SI, SE, UK, RS, TR
EL, ES,IE, PL, PT, SK
Register
When asking data on occupations in surveys, it can be asked a self description of the occupation or the job title. Data can also be retrieved from an administrative register. In fact this last possibility is not very often used by MS for the data collection of occupational data. In the LFS only Denmark and France use information from a register but they do it in combination with questions on the job title as well as requesting a self description of the occupation. For the Census, registers are more often used as source of information but still, only Finland, Slovenia, Poland and Sweden use this possibility. As occupations can easily change over time the use of registers is more difficult.
The collection of occupational data in these 13 domains should somehow differ taking into account that the source can be a household survey, an enterprise survey, or an administrative register, that data is not collected at the same level of detail in all surveys or even that the survey mode can change (CAPI, CATI, face to face…). In the questionnaire sent to the countries the questions refer to all domains and concerned the way the information on occupation is collected, the IT tools used, how the codification of occupation was conducted and if any consistency or plausibility tests were included in the data production process.
As the most important sources for data on occupation are the Labour Force Survey and the Population Census we have stressed that at least information for these 2 sources should be provided and some countries have in fact restricted their contribution to this 2 surveys. The information on the other domains was not uniformly provided and each country have provided information for some of them but not necessarily the same therefore we have chosen to provide here, in this synthesis document, only the information referring to LFS and the Census.
The preferred method of asking the information is in general a combination of requiring a self description of the occupation and the job title. Very often the job title is firstly asked and the description is then requested if the job title is somehow ambiguous. (See table 6) DK NL

9. Who codifies the occupational codes - LFS
Interviewers
Occupation experts
CZ, DE, ES, IT, LV, LT, HU, PL, SK, UK
BE, BG, AT, FI, SE, CH, TR
DK, EE, EL, IE, CY, LU, MT, PT, RO, SI, RS
Automatic
coding
When the information is collected, the codification of the occupational code can be done directly by the interviewer or later by experts using the information gathered during the interview. Very often in computer assisted data collections the codification is automatically done by the interviewer with the help of the data collection program but this is not always the case and coding is conducted sometimes later. When data is collected with the help of paper questionnaires the codification is more often conducted by experts. In some countries both interviewers and experts do it being the experts used in situations where the interviewer was not able to do it him/herself. (see table 7) FR NL

10. Use of IT tools when asking questions on occupation
For the countries using computer assisted data collection very often the research by key words or electronic dictionaries are used.
For countries using paper questionnaires, the IT tools can help later in the codification with searching tools by key words and/or databases of job titles which provide automatically the codes in national or ISCO classifications.

11. Consistency tests
Ideally, plausibility tests should be integrated in the data collection program
Ex-post control:
occupation,
highest level of education attained
economic activity of the local unit
Comparison of the structure of occupations with data from different sources (LFS, Census, Structure of earnings survey…).
Comparison of the structure of occupations over time, comparing this structure with previous data from the same survey.
The quality of the data collected can be evaluated by conducting consistency tests.
Ideally, plausibility tests should be integrated in the data collection program, warning the interviewer of inconsistency between the occupation declared and previous information provided like level of education, or economic activity of the local unit. This would allow interviewers to confirm the information provided and correct the error which can be in the occupation or in the other variables.
Although some countries have this kind of consistency tests, most prefer to conduct an ex-post control. In this case, the same kind of consistency tests can be conducted using information on occupation, highest level of education attained and economic activity of the local unit but others prefer the comparison of the structure of occupations with data from different sources (LFS, Census, Structure of earnings survey…). A third kind of consistency tests is the comparison of the structure of occupations over time, comparing this structure with previous data from the same survey. (see table 9)

12. Plans to use directly ISCO 08 as occupational classificationNo
>90%
BE, BG,CZ, EE,
EL, ES, FR, IT, LV,
NL, PL, PT, RO, SI,
SK, FI, SE
Yes
CY,AT, LU,
MT, RS, TR DK
50-90%
DE, IE, LT, UK
< 50%
HU, CH
As mentioned in 2.1, five Member States are already using ISCO 88 as occupational classification. The introduction of the 2008 revision of ISCO could be a possibility for Member States to adopt it as occupational classification or to revise their national classification in order to have a better matching.
In fact, apart from those which are already doing so, several Member States seam to have plans to use ISCO directly in the future (Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Romania, Slovak Republic and Finland). Germany does not yet have clear plans but this possibility is not excluded.
The direct use of ISCO has for sure a positive impact in the future comparability of the occupational data.
All the other Member States apart from Sweden and France have plans to change their national classification in order to have a better matching with ISCO 08 and the changing is foreseen in general for

13. National problems in the use of ISCO 08
The blur definition of supervisors.
Occupations based on a combination of technical and commercial activities may hardly be allocated
The big detail in minor group 121(Business services and administration managers) is well suited for very large companies, where managerial roles are most often separated. However, in mid-sized companies these functions can be combined in the same job and there is no place to classify them.
The sub-group 14 (Hospitality, retail and other services managers) is supposed to cover activities in companies of "small size" but we do not have such a size criterion.
Regarding jobs in agriculture, separating qualifying skilled [large group 6] and unskilled workers [general group 9] may be difficult.
The criterion to distinguish Managers of big farms (type ranches, large plantations) or simple farmers is needed
The absence of distinction between commercial agriculture from subsistence farming.
As most of the Member States have not yet started working with ISCO 08, it is hard to know which difficulties they will face when starting to use it; nevertheless some Member States have already spotted some possible problems which hopefully could be solved with good explanatory notes (see table 12). As the definitions for the ISCO 08 are not yet finalized this workshop could be a good opportunity to identify them in order that the definitions clarify these grey areas.
As the structure of the classification is now adopted, it will be useless to discuss structural changes and it will be more important to identify problematic borderlines, groups that in someway overlap and which need a particular care in the definition in order that they become mutually exclusive.
It also should be kept in mind that this is a world wide classification and some of occupations mentioned there are not meaningful in Europe. Nevertheless this shouldn't be a problem, data should be collected only on occupations which are significant in each country.

14. National problems in the use of ISCO 08
How to distinguish :
2263 Environmental and occupational health and hygiene professionals & 3230 Traditional and complementary medicine associate professionals
2512 Software developers & 2514 Applications programmers
2320 Vocational education teachers & (2310 University and higher education teachers or 2330 Secondary education teachers
3434 Chefs & 5120 Cooks.
3343 Administrative and executive secretaries & 4120 Secretaries (general);
3341 Office supervisors & 4110 General office clerks.
5131 Waiters & 5132 Bartenders.
As most of the Member States have not yet started working with ISCO 08, it is hard to know which difficulties they will face when starting to use it; nevertheless some Member States have already spotted some possible problems which hopefully could be solved with good explanatory notes (see table 12). As the definitions for the ISCO 08 are not yet finalized this workshop could be a good opportunity to identify them in order that the definitions clarify these grey areas.
As the structure of the classification is now adopted, it will be useless to discuss structural changes and it will be more important to identify problematic borderlines, groups that in someway overlap and which need a particular care in the definition in order that they become mutually exclusive.
It also should be kept in mind that this is a world wide classification and some of occupations mentioned there are not meaningful in Europe. Nevertheless this shouldn't be a problem, data should be collected only on occupations which are significant in each country.

15. Implementation plan for the ISCO 08
Due to the fact that the ISCO 08 definitions are not yet ready not many countries have clear plans for its implementation.
Eurostat is recommending the use of the new classification from 2011, therefore those which have already started to program, plan to follow this recommendation
A consequence of not having a planning for the implementation of ISCO 08 is that not many countries know if they are going to provide specific training on the new classification or not. Nevertheless those which have answered positively at least have foreseen some training to the interviewers and coding experts
Due to the fact that the ISCO 08 definitions are not yet ready not many countries have clear plans for its implementation. Nevertheless as Eurostat is recommending the use of the new classification from 2011, those which have already started to program, plan to follow this recommendation (see table 13). The main issue is to know if the Structure of earnings survey in 2010 will use ISCO 08 for the coding of occupation or not.
From one side this would be ideal because it could be a test for the new classification before the 2011 Census but this will of course only be possible if all the Member States agree in doing it because otherwise it will not be possible to calculate EU totals.
A consequence of not having a planning for the implementation of ISCO 08 is that not many countries know if they are going to provide specific training on the new classification or not. Nevertheless those which have answered positively at least have foreseen some training to the interviewers and coding experts (see table 14).