ISCO-08 Problematic areas

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Mandate of the Task Force

Provide guidelines which could help an harmonised EU interpretation of the ISCO-08 definitions

Provide guidance on the classification of some specific occupations

Propose better borderlines between groups of occupations

Propose concrete suggestions of improvement on the ISCO-08 definitions

Approval by all Member States of the conclusions of the Task force in the ISCO-08 workshop in November

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What do we have to discuss

ISCO-08 implementation General remarks Managers versus supervisors Problems of borderlines between groups Where to classify certain occupations Scope of the armed forces Suggestions of improvements to the definitions Correspondence between ISCO-08 unit groups of managers and

ISIC Rev. 4 Reasons for some aspects of the ISCO-08 structure "Inadequacy" of ISCO-08 structure

First discussion on the activities of an ESS-net on the improvement of quality of occupational data and the European socio-economic classification.

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A lot to discuss and only 1,5 day!

One more meeting could be needed!

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General issues of implementation of ISCO-08 (1 of 6)

There is a need for some introductory guidelines to ISCO 08 which provide information on: the main objectives of this classification, the conceptual framework, the approaches to some specific issues, notes of some particular occupations, some guidelines for the mapping of national occupations into

ISCO-08 and comparisons with previous versions of the classification.

If some specific interpretations or guidelines for the EU countries come out of the discussions of the Task force they should equally be included.

Something else? It would be important that ILO gives some time frame for the

preparation of this introduction

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General issues of implementation of ISCO-08 (2 of 6)

There is a need for stability of the definitions and correspondence tables between the ISCO-08 and the present version.

Although the version presented in the ILO site is called final, some minor adjustments are still going one.

These adjustments are needed because it would be really a pity to leave mistakes or incomplete information for the sake of stability but on the other hand we should find a way of informing the users in an unambiguous way on what were the changes introduced (versioning the files for instance).

How can this be done?

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General issues of implementation of ISCO-08 (3 of 6)

There is a need for definitions of the ISCO skill levels in terms of ISCED 1997 levels which appear in the definitions of the Major groups.

If the introduction to ISCO-08 is not considered a priority, at least these definitions should be provided as soon as possible.

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General issues of implementation of ISCO-08 (4 of 6) How to classify persons having a broad range of tasks and duties

which correspond to different occupations. Some general rule for the classification of these cases existed in the

ISCO-88 introduction, in the chapter "approaches to some specific issues" / "Occupations with a broad range of tasks and duties": (a) In cases where the tasks and duties performed require skills usually

obtained through different levels of training and experience, jobs should be classified in accordance with those tasks and duties which require the highest level of skills. For instance a job which consists of driving a van and delivering goods should be classified in Unit group 8322, Car taxi and van drivers.

(b) In cases where the tasks and duties are connected with different stages of the production and distribution of goods process, tasks and duties related to the production stage should take priority over associated ones, such as those related to the sales and marketing of the same goods, their transportation or the management of the production process - unless one of these tasks and duties predominates. For example, a baker who bakes bread, makes pastries and sells these products should not be classified as a sales person, but as a baker, which means, in ISCO-88 terms, Unit group 7412, Bakers, pastry-cooks and confectionery makers.

Do these rules still apply?

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General issues of implementation of ISCO-08 (5 of 6)

In the introduction to ISCO-08 some space should also be allocated to the problem of occupations which up till a few years ago did not need to have a tertiary level of education and which today are considered in the professional category - these include nurses and teachers for instance.

Some decisions should be taken on if the occupational classification reflects strictly the nature of the tasks preformed and the degree of responsibility or if the skills should also be taken into account.

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General issues of implementation of ISCO-08 (6 of 6)

ISCO-08 is a world wide classification. There exists no European version. So there are occupations included, which are not

relevant for Europe, which do not exist in Europe, for instance 1113 traditional chiefs and heads of villages.

Are there more examples of occupations that do normally not exist in Europe?

Is it possible to make a list of such occupations?

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Managers versus Supervisors

Managers have imprecise boundaries with other categories mainly when the managing functions are cumulated with other functions and the part and nature of the managing tasks is not clear.

Another problem commonly mentioned remains the difficulty of the classification according to the different types of managers. Degree of responsibility and size of the employer organization (enterprise/farm) seem to be a criteria, nevertheless those 2 aspects are not clearly quantified to make the process of decision transparent. In many of the ISCO-08 definitions for managers we can find expressions like "operators of small establishments", " managers of large hotel management companies or hotel chains", " small retail shops"

where the words small or large are not defined.

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Managers versus Supervisors

For supervisors some questions also are commonly asked: What is the basic concept for classification of supervisors? In case of e.g. building workers, supervising of other workers is

included in the tasks listed as well. What is the criterion of classifying them in major group 3 or 7?

Do supervisors in major group 3 perform only supervisory tasks? Another difficulty is that 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 supervisory functions.

It is clear that job titles will not provide the necessary information for a consistent and harmonized codification in this area and, very likely, ancillary variables will be needed.

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Managers versus Supervisors

Common ancillary variables and thresholds

Against: ES, IT, DE, AT… In favour: FR,NL, SE…

Look at description of tasks

Organizational context of the enterprise

Prevalence of managing tasks

Having or not the support of other managers

Common ancillary variables:

-"number of employees",

-"employment status",

- "time spent in management"

- “authorisation to take decisions"

Common thresholds:

(0-9, 10-49, 50-99, >100) or (0-5, 5-20, 20+) or (0-20, 20-100, 100+) for the number of employees

More or equal to 50%, less than 50% for the time spent in management

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Managers versus Supervisors

Main arguments against this approach are:

It is not feasible to have all these variables in all surveys.

It is true that it is not possible to have all these variables in all surveys, nevertheless "employment status" is a core variable for social surveys. And we could have the same approach as the ne used in the "core variables" which is having more precise information for some surveys which allow it and have less detailed information in others.

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Managers versus Supervisors

Main arguments against this approach are:

Thresholds for small and big countries are perhaps not the same.

We don't think that a small retail shop will differ so much from a country to another and the thresholds proposed were broad enough to be relevant in most of the Member states.

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Managers versus Supervisors

Main arguments against this approach are:

Information on the tasks performed is more useful than variables about the size of an enterprise or the number of employees

We also agree that information on the tasks performed is the best way to code occupation but if this information is collected why not to structure the information requested also in terms of the criteria decided.

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Managers versus Supervisors

Main arguments against this approach are:

It might result in a loss of comparability both between surveys (those which apply the extra variables are those which do not) and at international level.

Data on occupation (or any other variable) is never 100% comparable between surveys for many reasons which have nothing to do with the ancillary information used for the classification like the mode of data collection, the stratification used or even the time frame.

At least in this case we know why the data is not completely comparable and we know which is the closest to the reality.

Furthermore the data on occupation provided by the different surveys or administrative data is not anyway presented at the same level of detail (it can go from 1 digit to 4 digits of ISCO-08)

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Managers versus Supervisors

Main arguments against this approach are:

Any threshold would be arbitrary and would hardly meet different countries point of view.

We still think that some common criteria even based on arbitrary thresholds will gave better comparability than leaving the decision completely to the interviewer which is for sure the most arbitrary way of collecting the information.

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Scope of the armed forces

Military forces trained for combat

Cooks

Drivers

Doctors

Secretaries

Kitchen staff

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Scope of the armed forces

2 problems: In many countries, it is not possible to produce

information about the nature of the work performed by members of the armed forces.

Difficulty in drawing a borderline between “real military occupations” and “military occupations similar to civilian jobs”. Where to classify a military truck driver, a Human resource officer, operators of electronic military equipment? Nowadays probably most of the military occupations have somehow equivalents in civil life.

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Scope of the armed forces

A common EU approach should be taken to this question in order to have comparable data not only for Major Group 0 but also of the other Groups concerned (doctors, drivers, kitchen staff, etc).

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Correspondence between ISCO-08 unit groups of managers and ISIC Rev. 4 Lithuania would like to have a correspondence between ISCO-08 unit

groups of managers and ISIC Rev. 4 (or NACE respectively) economic activities they manage. According to the explanations in CIRCA forum on ISCO implementation (discussion on the 4/02/2010), ISCO-08 code 1321 “Manufacturing managers” should include managers of production relating to ISIC Rev. 4 Section C “Manufacturing”, D “Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply”, E “Water collection, treatment and supply”, definition of ISCO-08 unit group 1321 will be amended accordingly.

Such amendments would be valuable in all unit groups of ISCO-08 sub-major groups 12, 13, 14 (especially it is important to specify economic activities in unit groups 1211, 1212, 1213, 1219, 1223, 1342, 1343, 1344, 1349, 1420, 1431, 1439).

Because now it isn’t enough clear where we should classify manager of veterinary hospital (1342 or 1349), manager of motor vehicles repair garage (1420 or 1439), manager of chemist’s shop (1342 or 1420 or 1439), etc.

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