SOC 2000 and NS-SEC on the Labour Force Survey

The March-May Labour Force Survey dataset released on 18th July 2001 contains several new classifications for the first time. This page deals with two of these; the new Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 2000 which replaces SOC 90 and the National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-SEC) which will be used in place of Social Class (SC) and Socio-economic Group (SEG).

SOC 2000

SOC 2000 has been introduced because SOC 90 had become outdated. The extensive revisions to the SOC include a tighter definition of managerial occupations and moving many job titles between major groups to reflect the repositioning of certain jobs. New occupations have been introduced in the fields of computing, environment and conservation and customer service occupations. Most of the major groups have been re-named and all have a different composition in terms of job titles compared with their SOC 90 counterparts.

From Spring 2001 the LFS will classify people's occupations to SOC 2000. Information about the key differences between this and the previous (SOC90) classification was published in the July 2001 issue of Labour Market Trends. This article was based on data from the LFS summer 2000 quarter that was dual coded to both SOC 90 and SOC 2000 and on the LFS winter 1996/1997 quarter that was recoded to both classifications

SOC 2000 is available on micro-datasets from LFS spring 2001 quarter and is also included in the Spring edition of the LFS quarterly supplement and the August edition of Labour Market Trends.

The ONS has produced a limited set of historic time-series estimates on a SOC 2000 basis to meet users needs, these are considered the best available. These estimates are based on the LFS winter 2000/01 dual coded quarter, because there is no direct mapping between the two classifications. More information and tables are available HERE.

The table below shows the LFS data for all in employment for Spring 2001 at the major group level of the new classification. More general information on SOC2000 is available on the NS web page;

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/methods_quality/ns_sec/soc2000.asp.

SOC (Standard Occupational Classification) 2000 - All in employment; 16 and over; UK; Spring 2001

* includes people who did not state their occupations.

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NS-SEC

The NS-SEC is an occupationally based classification designed to categorise the whole adult population. It will be available on the micro-datasets from Spring 2001 and is planned to be included in the Summer 2001 LFS quarterly supplement. This new concept relies on new questions introduced in the Spring quarter and therefore it is difficult to provide any historic data on a consistent basis.

The version of the classification, which is expected to be used for most analyses, has eight classes, the first of which can be subdivided. The table below presents data from the LFS in these categories. More general information on NS-SEC is available on the NS web page;

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/methods_quality/ns_sec/default.asp.

NS-SEC on the Labour Force Survey; 16 and over; UK; Spring 2001

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This page last revised: Friday, 8 March 2002