Converting occupation codes accross years

[KariWilliams]

IPUMS provides harmonized versions of occupation (and industry) that do just this–coding all the different iterations of the Census occupation coding scheme to a single version of it; we generate these by compiling the crosswalks you describe that track changes across two adjacent schemes. See the variables OCC1990 and OCC2010 in IPUMS CPS. These have not been updated to include the most recent updates to the 2018 Census occupation codes (introduced to CPS in 2020); however, their counterparts in IPUMS USA (OCC1990, OCC2010) have been updated. Information on creating the OCC1990 variable through the 2000 coding scheme is described in a BLS working paper; another working paper describes the methodology for adding 2010 (which was also used for updating the variables to include data coded using the 2018 scheme). Contact ipums@umn.edu directly if you would like the underlying metadata we use to generate these harmonized measures.