The main priority was to bring the classification up to date to reflect changes in society.
SOC 2000 Major groups
- Managers and senior officials
- Professional occupations
3. Associate professional and technical occupations
4. Administrative and secretarial occupations
5. Skilled trades’ occupations
6. Personal service occupations
7. Sales and customer service occupations
8. Process, plant and machine operatives
9. Elementary occupations
SOC90 changed group sizes when revised to SOC2000
National Statistics Socio Economic Classification NS-SEC
1. Higher managerial and professional occupations
1.1 Employers and managers in larger organisations
1.2 Higher professionals
2. Lower managerial and professional occupations
3. Intermediate occupations
4. Small employers and own account workers
5. Lower supervisory, craft and related occupations
6. Semi- routine occupations
7. Routine occupations
8. Never worked/long term unemployed
The NS-SEC is made up with the current or last main job and their employment status (i.e. whether an employer, self employed, a manager, a supervisor or an employee) So for example a self-employed plumber would be in a different class from a plumber with 25 employees, and both would be in different classes from an employee plumber, who in turn would be in a different class from a supervisor of plumbers.
The new NS-SEC has split some of the groups up. So as a result in group 1 over half of the managers were originally in class 1, are now in class 2. This is because when SOC90 was revised to SOC2000, new positions were identified, so some junior and middle managers in large organisations are now classed as 1.2. Along with these are such occupations at post office managers and account managers.
Similar changes have been made to the way employees in professional occupations are distributed between class 1.2 and class 2. The interim NS-SEC changed `professional occupations` from associate professional` which went to class 2. Lower professionals were distinguished by the fact that they are subject to move day-to-day control by managers than higher professionals.
The new NS-Sec also confirms that the manual/non manual divide is dead in so far as it was meant to mark a broad division between the `middle` and working classes. Some `manual` employee occupations are now classed as `lower middle`. Class 3 (e.g. telephone fitters and specialist electricians) in class 6 we have shop assistants, sales assistants. In Class 7, there are window dressers, flower arrangers and store clerks. The male, manual, muscular, industrial working class is fast disappearing from the scene. Therefore Class 6 is now largely a female non-manual, service sector class.
With this new scheme, we can see how the gender balance of classes has changed. While men and women are equally represented in Class 2 among the lower managers and professionals. Class 1 shows a very different picture. Here men outnumber women by almost 3-1. There is actually an improvement in terms of women representation in the top two classes compared to ten years ago, women are still an underrepresented ( but growing) part of Class 1-the top earning industry and the professions. The attached table shows an example of the differences.
Population of working age female’s social class 2000
Class Percentage
Professional 3%
Intermediate 23%
Skilled non-manual 31%
Skilled manual 7%
Partly skilled 15%
Skilled manual 5%
Other 16%
Population of working males’ social class 2000
Class Percentage
Professional 8%
Intermediate 27%
Skilled non-manual 11%
Skilled manual 27%
Partly skilled 13%
Skilled manual 4%
Other 10%
Advantages
The way groups are listed are quite clear to understand
The information can be used from year to year to compare against statistics.
Disadvantages
Job titles can change and therefore information may be misleading
It links people by professions but what about Royalty or the lords and Barons etc.
Married women were classed by their husbands’ occupation previously so misleading.
Unemployed or disabled people are not classified as such.
