Mihkel Reispass Methodologist Methodology Department

I have been practically working with different classifications (ISCO, NACE and so on) since 1997 and, most important which I highlighted, was Population Census 2000, where I was an expert on coding occupations, and I supervised 30 encoders.

Estonian national statistic is using ISCO 88 since 1992, at the same time we started to work out our own national occupational classification (NOC). We finalized it in NOC is based on ISCO 88 and ISCO 88(COM).

We took over from both classifications the occupations that are usable in Estonia and excluded those that were not important to us. For example:

Major group 1: Legislators, senior officials and managers

Major group 2: Professionals

Major group 3: Technicians and associate professionals

Major group 5: Service workers and shop and market sales workers

Major group 6: Skilled agricultural and fishery workers

Major group 7: Craft and related trades workers

Major group 8: Plant and machine operators and assemblers

Major group 9: Elementary occupations

Major group 0: Armed forces

The definition of “managers” The words “manager” and “supervisor” are almost synonyms and have many different meanings in Estonian, but luckily for us, the use of the word “manager” in Estonian common language is not so fuzzy as in English, so we have quite few problems to classify this occupation. These words are mainly used to describe a job position in commerce/trade business and only one question arises – whether the person is a sales- person or a head of the firm. The most problematic are the answers we get from the Russians – they use it more often, but mostly it means a sales-person (3415).

The definition of “managers” To solve and prevent this problem and get better information about his/her occupation, we have some extra questions in our questionnaires: Industry, employer information and sector of employment. The number of employees in the organization. The number of subordinates beneath the worker.

The definition of “nurses” and “teachers” There are some difficulties with teachers and nurses (nurse in meaning teachers in kindergarten) – as we have not established a national qualification standard yet, we might not have enough information about their occupational functions and so we have to consider their educational level to put some kind of code (which could be wrong as education does not reflect the correct occupational functions).

Thank you!