Harmonized ATUS Occupation/Industry Codes

TIME USE
1

Hi IPUMS,

I searched the forums for additional clarification about this – apologies if I missed something – but I’d like to clarify how occupation and industry codes are measured on the IPUMS website for the ATUS. While there are explicit definitions for the general industry and occupation variables, the more detailed four-digit ones do not have explanation.

The BLS’s ATUS download explicitly says the versions of the codes that they use: http://www.bls.gov/tus/iocodes.htm. However, when IPUMS provides us with the accessible versions, do they update all the prior series to the most recent version? To clarify, although the ATUS followed the 2002 SOC codes from the Census between 2003-2010, and then switched over to the 2010 SOC codes in 2011, since I downloaded all the years (2003-2014) are they already harmonized to the 2010 SOC codes? The same question holds for industry.

Thank you for your explanation and assistance!

2

Since the coding schemes for the four-digit industry and occupation codes change over time, it is not possible for us to provide OCC and IND value labels with your data extract. You can find the definitions for the OCC and IND values on their Codes page (linked to in this sentence). If you download multiple sample years, the OCC and IND codes will correspond to the coding scheme used in the respondent’s survey year. In other words, these variables are not automatically harmonized to the most recent year in your sample selection.

Hope this helps.

3

Got it, that’s exactly what I wanted to clarify. I just wasn’t sure if IPUMS harmonized it already. Thank you for taking the time to reply!