Is IPUMS planning to add a crosswalk between the new 2018 OCC categories and previous versions of the OCC variable?
IPUMS USA is planning to update our crosswalks for occupation codes later this year. Until then, the Census Bureau has a page dedicated to occupation and industry crosswalks; this page includes a crosswalk of 2018 to 2010 Census occupation codes. Additionally, we have updated the harmonized occupation measures OCC1990 and OCC2010 to include data that use the 2018 occupation codes.
Hi,
This still hasn’t been done, right? I am also trying to build a crosswalk of the variable OCC (version 2018-onwards) to the previous versions of this variable…
The Census Bureau creates occupation crosswalks, which you can view here. They provide a crosswalk from the 2010 occupation classification scheme to the 2018 occupation classification scheme. The codes in these crosswalks are the same as the codes listed in the variable OCC (which differ by year). IPUMS has not created our own crosswalk for this conversion because the Census Bureau already provides it.
An alternative to using a crosswalk between the 2010 and 2018 schemes is to use the IPUMS variable OCC2010. This variable applies a modified version of the 2010 occupation classification scheme to data from 1950 to present. The harmonization is built into the variable. IPUMS does not offer a similar occupation variable that uses the 2018 occupation classification scheme.
Hi Isabel,
Thank for your getting back to me. I had checked the Census crosswalks before posting the question, but I got confused because there are some codes in that Excel file that are neither in “occ” for 2010, nor in “occ” for 2018. For example, code 0030 (Legislators) appears in the Census Crosswalk (I guess for completeness) but then it is not in the variable “occ”, so I think this led me to believe this file was not the correct crosswalk. It’s all solved now though.
Thanks!
Best,
Juan
There are some occupation codes in the Census Bureau’s crosswalks and in the occupation classification schemes themselves that do not appear in the public use microdata samples (PUMS) that are released to the public and to IPUMS. Legislators, for example, are consolidated into the category “chief executives and legislators/public administration,” as you can see in the OCC2010 variable codes. This is likely due to small sample sizes and privacy requirements. While legislators were individually coded and identified in the original ACS data, that code is not available in the PUMS files. These consolidations are shown in the PUMS codes lists (here is one from the 2018 ACS as an example).