Work Environment and Wellbeing Project

In 2020, researchers from the University of Michigan and Florida State University (FSU) set out to create user-friendly datasets with detailed job characteristic information for use with survey data that are coded using Census occupation codes. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network Project (O*NET) program produces detailed data about occupational characteristics and worker requirements in the U.S. O*NET gathers and produces data that describes occupations in terms of the knowledge, skills, and abilities required as well as how the work is performed in terms of tasks, work activities, and other descriptors. However, these data are not ready to use with the occupational codeframes commonly employed by population-based surveys. This project set out to fill the gap.

With financial support from the Michigan Retirement and Disability Research Center (MRDRC), we held a workshop in July 2020 which brought together a multidisciplinary group of researchers, from both academic and government settings, who were currently engaged in survey-based research and/or data collection involving linked occupational data. The workshop included researchers and staff from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the RAND Corporation, FSU, the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH), the O*NET, the Social Security Administration (SSA), SSA’s Occupational Requirements Survey (ORS), as well as other universities. Workshop participants discussed topics including current practices for linkage of occupational characteristics datasets with other survey data, limitations of these methods, best practices, and how to make linked data available to the wider research community. A workgroup and an advisory group were formed as a result of this workshop, with the goal of producing user-friendly O*NET datasets that could be merged with data from population-based surveys such as the HRS. 

Work began in Fall 2020, with the HRS and FSU providing some initial support for this project.  Based on the 2020 workshop and the work accomplished with the initial support, in 2021 we received funding from SSA to formally develop and disseminate publicly-available versions of O*NET data that are ready to link with occupational codeframes commonly used in population-based surveys, as well as ready-made HRS-O*NET datasets. In 2022, we formally released three datasets available for public use on the website of the FSU Claude Pepper Center (CPC), as well as HRS-O*Net datasets for restricted use through the HRS. 

Three datasets are provided here. These are linkable to datasets that use Census 2000 or 2010 occupation codes. Commonly used national survey datasets that use Census occupational coding include the American Community Surveys, Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), Midlife in the United States (MDUS), HRS, and more.