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Description

OCSTATUS preserves inconsistently available information in responses to occupational questions. It is similar to the HISCO subsidiary coding scheme "STATUS". The purpose of OCSTATUS is to preserve information about the social status of an occupation.

Correct usage of OCSTATUS is critical to proper interpretation of the occupation codes.

In modifying the HISCO system we faced the challenge of classifying industrial workers who often gave information on the industry they were employed in and less specific information on the tasks and functions they performed. We have grouped people of varying statuses in similar occupational codes.

To differentiate between skilled workers, people who "worked in" a particular industry (skill level indeterminate), and laborers, you must use OCSTATUS.

OCSTATUS has been applied to all occupations. Thus, a person indicating that they are an "Assistant Superintendent" receives the occupational code for Superintendent (22xxx), and the OCSTATUS code 34 for assistant.

Changes from the HISCO STATUS codes
We have changed the HISCO STATUS codes for ownership to

Changes from the HISCO RELATION codes
We have removed the "temporal relationships" category from the OCRELATE codes and moved them to OCSTATUS. We felt that "former or retired" and "future" relationships to work were better described as status designators. Future relationships to an occupation were often people describing themselves as students or apprentices in specified professions and trades.

Comparability

Because of the large number of strings (500,000+) in the United States 1880 (complete count dataset) occupation dictionary, status was assigned by keywords for many individuals. In the first phase of coding the United States occupations into the 1950 coding scheme the U.S. coders standardized the spelling and layout of the occupational response into a new variable. During coding we referred to this variable as the LABEL field. It is available in US80A421.

We have used two additional codes in describing status for U.S. responses which only indicated a place of work, or a product. Because these responses generally lacked any other kinds of status information we put this information in the status variable. These responses could also have been coded to many different occupations, so the social status of the person is unknown.

• Code 80 indicates people who only specified the location of their work. For example, it is not clear what people who say "Cotton mill" or "Dry good store" do there. They could be an owner, or they could be a laborer. Code 81 indicates people who only specified a product. We assume that people who gave this form of response were either making or selling the product. Some artisanal workers would have combined both production and retailing functions. The U.S. 1950 coding scheme provides some guidance for how to classify these workers. In coding the U.S. occupations into the NAPP-HISCO classification scheme, we followed the decisions made in applying the 1950 codes. In general, the more specific a product was, the more likely that the person was classified to a production occupation. More general products were classified as retailing occupations. For example, people who responded "Dry goods" were classified as salespeople in stores. Conversely, people who said "Artificial leaves" were classified as production workers. We considered it unlikely that products such as this would have been the sole business of a wholesale or retail store.

Universe

Availability

• Canada: 1881, 1901
• Iceland: 1801, 1901
• Norway: 1865, 1875, 1900
• Sweden: 1900
• United States: 1880