Standard Occupational Classification

The 2018 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system is a federal statistical standard used by federal agencies to classify workers into occupational categories for the purpose of collecting, calculating, or disseminating data. All workers are classified into one of 867 detailed occupations according to their occupational definition. To facilitate classification, detailed occupations are combined to form 459 broad occupations, 98 minor groups, and 23 major groups. Detailed occupations in the SOC with similar job duties, and in some cases skills, education, and/or training, are grouped together.

For additional information visit: https://www.bls.gov/soc/

Data and Resources

Field Value
accessLevel public
bureauCode {012:20}
catalog_@context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
catalog_describedBy https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
identifier DOL-BLS-217
issued 2009-06-19
landingPage https://www.bls.gov/soc/
license https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
modified 2009-06-19
programCode {012:031}
publisher Bureau of Labor Statistics
publisher_hierarchy U.S. Department of Labor > Bureau of Labor Statistics
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash 5e917a2252fdfef073c83762823b98f52f67d576
source_schema_version 1.1
Groups
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • National Provider
  • North America
Tags
  • amerigeo
  • amerigeoss
  • ckan
  • geo
  • geoss
  • national
  • north-america
  • occupational-classification
  • occupations
  • standard-occupational-classification-soc
  • united-states
isopen True
license_id cc-zero
license_title Creative Commons CCZero
license_url http://www.opendefinition.org/licenses/cc-zero
maintainer Amrit Kohli
maintainer_email kohli.amrit@dol.gov
metadata_created 2025-11-21T21:55:30.945543
metadata_modified 2025-11-21T21:55:30.945547
notes The 2018 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system is a federal statistical standard used by federal agencies to classify workers into occupational categories for the purpose of collecting, calculating, or disseminating data. All workers are classified into one of 867 detailed occupations according to their occupational definition. To facilitate classification, detailed occupations are combined to form 459 broad occupations, 98 minor groups, and 23 major groups. Detailed occupations in the SOC with similar job duties, and in some cases skills, education, and/or training, are grouped together. For additional information visit: https://www.bls.gov/soc/
num_resources 1
num_tags 11
title Standard Occupational Classification