The 1988 International Standard

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1 The 2008 edition of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) and its implications for France 1! Cécile Brousse* The International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) focuses on the tasks and duties undertaken in the job. This approach differs substantially from the concepts underlying the definition of French occupations and sociooccupational categories (Professions et Catégories Socioprofessionnelles: PCS). These divergences are compounded by the interpretation difficulties raised by the new ISCO adopted in Establishing equivalences between the French and international socio-occupational classifications will be a delicate task. The 1988 International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-88) has been widely disseminated not only at regional level but also at national level. Many countries around the world use ISCO, or a localized version, as their national classification. The only European countries to maintain their own classifications of occupations are Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and (outside the EU) Switzerland. In France, ISCO has gradually been disseminated throughout the official statistical system at the behest of Eurostat and international organizations (Table 1). This trend should accelerate for at least two reasons: the ramp-up of EU projects using ISCO: the socio-economic classification (ESeC) and the Source: ILO International Standard Classification of Occupations, French 1968 edition European register of occupations (EurOccupations) - the 2008 ISCO update by the International Labor Office (ISCO-08). French official statistical authorities have acted on these developments. INSEE and DARES, previously on the sidelines, took part in the technical group on ISCO updating and in the 2007 ILO tripartite conference. Until now, ISCO-88 codes were assigned from the French national classification of Occupations and Socio-Occupational Categories (PCS) by means of a correspondence table that required information on the firm s size and activity. Now, France needs to plan the redesign of its occupationcoding tools and in liaison with Eurostat its household and business surveys. 1 Originally published as L édition 2008 de la classification internationale type des professions, Courrier des statistiques (French series), no. 125, Nov.-Dec. 2008, pp , * INSEE, Employment Division. Table 1: ISCO-08 in selected official statistical sources Sample surveys Administrative sources French title English title of EU section French title English title of EU section Enquêtes annuelles de recensement Census Enquête Emploi Labour Force Survey (LFS) Accidents du travail Accidents at work (ESAW) Enquête sur la santé et la consommation médicale European Health Interview Survey Maladies professionnelles Occupational diseases (EODS) Enquête sur les revenus et les conditions de vie EU-SILC Annual job vacancy statistics Enquête Budget des ménages Household Budget Survey Average annual gross earnings Note: ISCO is also used, most notably, in the Structure of Earnings Survey, the Time Use Survey, the Adult Education Survey, the SHARE surveys, and EU surveys on ICT usage in households and by individuals. Courrier des statistiques, English series no. 15,

2 Cécile Brousse Basic principles of ISCO-08 ISCO focuses on the tasks undertaken in the course of an occupation. The grouping levels are determined by the skills required for the job. This approach is reflected in the English name, which uses O for occupation ; the French name is Classification Internationale Type des Professions, but the French professions is not an exact equivalent of the English occupation. ISCO-08 comprises four nested aggregation levels. At the detailed level, it is divided into 436 headings called unit groups. These are consolidated into 130 minor groups, which form 43 sub-major groups and, at the most aggregated level, 10 major groups (Appendix). Farm holding: wine harvest at Beaumes-de-Venise, in the Vaucluse (France) Occupations are distributed across the groups according to the level and type of skills required to engage in them. The skill-level criterion is based on the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) and serves to characterize eight of the ten major groups. For example, major group 9 of elementary occupations is composed of categories requiring skills equivalent to those taught in primary education. There are two exceptions to this rule: major groups 0 (Armed forces) and 1 (Managers), for which the skill-level criterion is used to rank the sub-major groups that compose them (Table 2). In each major group, occupations are classified by type of skill, a criterion that reflects four dimensions: scope of knowledge needed, tooling and Aircraft mechanic at Siemens machinery used, equipment on which or with which persons work, and type of goods and services produced. From ISCO-88 to ISCO-08: main changes The ISCO updating encompassed all aggregation levels of the classification. At level 1, the most important changes concerned farmers, overseers (chefs d équipe) and retailers, nurses, and primary-school teachers. Smallholder farmers have been shifted from major group 1 to major group 6. Supervisors were formerly aggregated with the workers under their supervision often in major groups 7, 8, and 9. Now, they are separated under distinct headings of major groups 3, 4, and 5. The position of retailers has been defined more precisely: small retailers have moved from major group 1 to major group 5. Lastly, the previous version of ISCO contained parallel groups for nurses and teachers. Depending on the education level required for these occupations, countries were allowed to classify these workers in major group 2 or major group 3. This arrangement has been eliminated. Overall, the changes reflect the rising importance attached to task content and skills, which should facilitate international comparisons. At the most detailed level of ISCO, the update consisted in aggregating the few unit groups whose separation had become obsolete chiefly in group 8 of machine operators and, conversely, in splitting unit groups or creating new ones. The aim was to take into account the emergence of new occupations in information and communication technologies (ICTs). There was also a desire to remedy the fact that the old classification was too detailed in certain fields and not detailed enough in others such as healthcare, office work, tourism, and the informal sector. On balance, the reorganization of groupings reduces the visibility of the highest-skilled occupations in government but increases that of the lowest-skilled occupations in the tertiary sector: workers in direct personal services and protection and security services. Difficulties in interpreting ISCO-08 In its current state, the classification still contains imprecisions, some of which may be cleared up when the explanatory note is released. The first interpretational difficulties concern the conceptual framework. Given the weight attached to skill criteria, managers of small hotels or small restaurants could have taken the same path as small retailers and managers of small farm holdings rather than stay in sub-major group 14 with managers of large retail outlets. There is also imprecision in ISCO s practical implementation for statistical purposes: lack of information on criteria for distinguishing supervisors (Box) from other workers, supervisors from managers, corporate executives from retailers and craftsmen/ women, managers from high-skilled, and so on. Similarly, sub-major group 14 is supposed to cover activities performed in modest-sized enterprises, but no such size criterion is available. Regarding agricultural occupations, questions may arise on the skill criterion for distinguishing between 18

3 The 2008 edition of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) Table 2: Correspondence between ISCO-08 major groups and skill levels ISCO-08 major groups Skill level ISCED-97 Corresponding education levels 1 Managers Professionals 4 5a - 6 First stage of tertiary education (short or medium duration) Second stage of tertiary education (leading to an advanced research qualification) First stage of tertiary education (medium duration) Second stage of tertiary education (leading to an advanced research qualification) 3 Technicians and associate 3 5b First stage of tertiary education, first level (short or medium duration) 4 Clerical support workers 5 Service and sales workers 6 Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers Secondary and post-secondary education (non-tertiary) 7 Craft and related trades workers 8 Plant and machine operators, and assemblers 9 Elementary occupations 1 1 Primary education 0 Armed forces occupations 1, No criterion skilled workers (major group 6) and unskilled workers (major group 9). The criterion for distinguishing managers of farm holdings (such as ranches or large plantations ) from plain farmers should also be spelled out. Lastly, the absence of a rule for distinguishing between market-oriented agriculture and subsistence agriculture is also problematic, particularly for countries with a large food-production sector. Establishing correspondence between ISCO and France s PCS classification: a challenging task Some occupational groups are described in great detail in the French PCS and far more summarily in ISCO. For example, social work associate form a single group in ISCO (3412) but six in PCS. The same is true of sales occupations. PCS breaks down sales personnel by type of product sold; ISCO defines fewer categories of sales personnel, and divides them by type of sales outlet. Similarly, the French classification contains far more sub-categories of managers and engineers (cadres et ingénieurs). For each activity, it identifies three types of managers according to whether their activity is production-, sales-, or R&D-oriented. By contrast, ISCO defines some occupations in far greater detail. One particularly striking example is specialized medicine. ISCO identifies traditional and complementary medicine, (2230), physiotherapists (2264), dieticians and nutritionists (2265), audiologists and speech therapists (2266), and optometrists and ophthalmic opticians (2267), while PCS merely distinguishes between hospital doctors and specialist private practitioners. ISCO also seems to provide fuller coverage of newtechnology occupations and craft trades. PCS does not describe government occupations with great precision. For instance, all researchers working for public agencies are aggregated under Researchers in public research Social work: trainer sector (PCS 342e), whereas ISCO draws a distinction starting at level 3 between physical and earth science (211), mathematicians, actuaries and statisticians (212), life science (213), and so on. The same applies to categories as diverse in terms of tasks performed as government engineers (PCS 332a) and postal workers (PCS 521a). These differences in degree of precision would be inconsequential if the two classifications converged at higher aggregation levels. In fact, however, for an equivalent skill level, the aggregation criteria very often differ. ISCO ignores the separation between employed work and selfemployment essential in PCS and the public-sector/privatesector distinction does not play the same structural role in ISCO as in PCS. ISCO is supposed to focus on tasks actually performed; in practice, it also uses the education criterion, particularly to classify. In fact, ISCO bears a closer resemblance to the Operational Register of Occupations (Répertoire Opérationnel des Métiers: ROME) developed by the French National Employment Courrier des statistiques, English series no. 15,

4 Cécile Brousse Agency (Agence Nationale Pour l Emploi: ANPE) and to France s former Occupations Code (Code Métiers) than to PCS. ISCO s aggregation criteria are sometimes surprising in the French context. Drivers and mobile plant operators are grouped together at the second level of ISCO (83). Chefs are classified with photographers (34), librarians with legal (26), domestic cleaners and helpers with freight handlers (9), aircraft pilots with forestry technicians (31), bar managers with recreation-center managers and bank-branch managers (1), bishops with sociologists (263), and so on. Although the term supervisor is very seldom used, the introduction in ISCO of categories for first-level management should make it easier to establish a correspondence with the French classification. PCS, at the second level, already defined a group of foremen/women and supervisors (contremaîtres et agents de maîtrise), of whom 80% performed management functions. The category contains 17 headings. The absence of supervisor categories in ISCO-88 had led INSEE to classify contremaîtres and agents de maîtrise in keeping with ILO recommendations in major groups 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9 at the 2 According to an analysis by François Gleizes (INSEE, Employment Division), the 2006 French Labor-Force Survey allows an identification of persons who have at least one person under their authority or under their responsibility. The share of persons performing supervisory duties varies from 67% (among members of the executive and legislative branches and higherlevel managers in general government) to 3% among unskilled workers in services and sales. Two-thirds of supervisory personnel do not selfdeclare their hierarchical positions. Box: Supervisors, a new category whose boundaries are hard to discern There is no exact, positive definition to support the introduction of the concept of supervisor in ISCO. Supervisors are mainly defined in negative terms: they are not managers and, it is argued, the content of their tasks and their duties are what distinguishes them from the persons whom they supervise. We lack an explicit definition of the content of the additional tasks assigned to supervisors in fields where the decision was taken to introduce this differentiation. Absent such a definition, national practices will make it impossible to compare these groups. Several groups of supervisors do not seem to have a formal place in ISCO-08: they perform their activities in sectors as important as warehousing, sorting, maintenance, and restaurants. Lastly, ISCO-08 groups all technical supervisors at level 3, but scatters administrative and cleaning supervisors across level 4. same level as the workers under their supervision. This solution did not prove satisfactory. Regarding supervisors, the direct transposition of PCS to ISCO will not be easy, particularly in the industrial sector. The latter is organized around two categories of supervisory staff: overseers (chefs d équipe) at the first level, and foremen/womensupervisors at the second level; now PCS classifies overseers in the same category as skilled workers, but without identifying overseers as such. Foremen/women are an integral part of the intermediate occupations group, of which they constitute a clearly defined subset (CS 48). If the supervisor categories had to incorporate overseers in addition to foremen/women, it would be hard to establish a direct correspondence between ISCO-08 and the French national classification. The difficulty is all the greater as foremen/women and overseers like other supervisor categories seldom volunteer their hierarchical position when asked to describe their occupation in French household surveys. In fact, self-reporting of hierarchical functions varies significantly between socio-occupational groups, with sharp differences between male and female occupations. For instance, in sales and personal services, only 30% of unskilled employees who perform supervision mention the fact explicitly. By contrast, one-half of plant and machine operators and onehalf of assembly workers engaged in supervision say so in their occupational description. Terms such as head (chef), organizer (animateur), and foreman (contremaître) are hardly ambiguous, but person in charge of (responsable) or controller (contrôleur), commonly used by persons in hierarchical positions, are also used by employees without managerial functions. 2 The use of ancillary variables seems necessary not only to address issues of imprecise occupation labeling, but also to stabilize and harmonize coding rules, at least at EU level, notably in cases where ISCO rules are not sufficiently clear. INSEE has a particularly rich experience in this area, since PCS coding relies on an abundant set of complementary variables. n 20

5 The 2008 edition of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) Appendix: ISCO-08 major groups and sub-major groups 1 Managers 11 Chief executives, senior officials and legislators 12 Administrative and commercial managers 13 Production and specialised services managers 14 Hospitality, retail and other services managers 2 Professionals 21 Science and engineering 22 Health 23 Teaching 24 Business and administration 25 Information and communications technology 26 Legal, social and cultural 3 Technicians and associate 31 Science and engineering associate 32 Health associate 33 Business and administration associate 34 Legal, social, cultural and related associate 35 Information and communications technicians 4 Clerical support workers 41 General and keyboard clerks 42 Customer services clerks 43 Numerical and material recording clerks 44 Other clerical support workers 5 Service and sales workers 51 Personal service workers 52 Sales workers 53 Personal care workers 54 Protective services workers 6 Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers 61 Market-oriented skilled agricultural workers 62 Market-oriented skilled forestry, fishery and hunting workers 63 Subsistence farmers, fishers, hunters and gatherers 7 Craft and related trades workers 71 Building and related trades workers, excluding electricians 72 Metal, machinery and related trades workers 73 Handicraft and printing workers 74 Electrical and electronic trades workers 75 Food processing, wood working, garment and other craft and related trades workers 8 Plant and machine operators, and assemblers 81 Stationary plant and machine operators 82 Assemblers 83 Drivers and mobile plant operators 9 Elementary occupations 91 Cleaners and helpers 92 Agricultural, forestry and fishery labourers 93 Labourers in mining, construction, manufacturing and transport 94 Food preparation assistants 95 Street and related sales and service workers 96 Refuse workers and other elementary workers 0 Armed forces occupations 01 Commissioned armed forces officers 02 Non-commissioned armed forces officers 03 Armed forces occupations, other ranks Courrier des statistiques, English series no. 15,