Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) Codes

Career Technical Education (CTE) Use Only:
SOC codes for CTE programs and Labor Market Information (LMI) data requests.

The 2018 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) Links to an external site. system is a federal statistical standard Links to an external site. 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.

The SOC code is the six-digit code listed before the occupation. The first two digits indicate the 'broad occupation' and the following four digits refine the job definition as seen in the example below. On the next page, we outline how the SOC code can be even more specialized when researching for Labor Market Information.