SweJEM: Occupational coding systems

Until 1990, population and housing censuses were made every five years. Then information was collected about occupational codes for everyone who answered the questionnaires. In 2001, Statistics Sweden started a register called Longitudinal Integration Database for Health Insurance and Labour Market Studies (LISA). In this register, among other things, there is information about occupational codes. Unfortunately, there are no register sources for occupational codes in the period between 1990 and 2001. 
 
Over the years, occupations have been coded according to several different coding systems, see table. Professions that existed before may no longer exist and new ones will emerge. In addition, occupations with more requirements for education have increased over time and this has changed the order of some occupations in the occupational coding systems. It can be difficult to translate the codes between different versions of the coding system, since even the finest deviations (4-digit codes) include groups of occupations, and occupations within the same occupational code in one system could have been classified to two different occupational codes in another occupational coding system. Descriptions of occupational coding systems and code keys between systems are available on the home page of Statistics Sweden (www.scb.se).