Description

Universe Note: "New Workers" are persons seeking employment for the first time, who had not yet secured their first job.

OCC1950 applies the 1950 Census Bureau occupational classification system to occupational data, to enhance comparability across years. For pre-1940 samples created at Minnesota, the alphabetic responses supplied by enumerators were directly coded into the 1950 classification. For other samples, the information in the variable OCC was recoded into the 1950 classification. Codes above 970 are non-occupational responses retained in the historical census samples or blank/unknown. The design of OCC1950 is described at length in " Integrated Occupation and Industry Codes and Occupational Standing Variables in the IPUMS.". The composition of the 1950 occupation categories is described in detail in U.S. Bureau of the Census,
Alphabetic Index of Occupations and Industries: 1950
(Washington D.C., 1950).

In 1850-1880, any laborer with no specified industry in a household with a farmer is recoded into farm labor. In 1860-1900, any woman with an occupational response of "housekeeper" enters the non-occupational category "keeping house" if she is related to the head of household. Cases affected by these imputation procedures are identified by an appropriate data quality flag.

A parallel variable called OCC1990, available for the samples from 1950 onward, codes occupations into a simplified version of the 1990 occupational coding scheme.