On the Creation of Multidimensional Occupational-skill Scales and Their Linkage to the Data from Social and Economic Surveys: Methods and issues

This paper discusses a method for linking the U.S. O*NET occupational skill information to the data from the Japanese General Social Surveys (JGSS), and issues therein. O*NET, which is published by the U.S. Department of Labor is comprised of multiple measures of occupational skills for more than 2000 occupations, which are further divisions of the occupational classification employed by the 2000 & 2010 U.S. Population Census. The U.S. General Social Surveys (GSS), which the JGSS partially replicate in Japan, use the occupational classifications of the 2000 U.S. Population Census, and thereby enable an assessment of the average occupational skills for their occupational categories. However, there are two issues which must be resolved in linking the O*NET occupational-skill information to the data of the JGSS.

The first issue is the absence of one-to-one correspondence between the occupational categories of the JGSS and those of the GSS. The second issue concerns the fact that even for cases where reasonable correspondences exist, there are doubts about the validity of applying occupational-skill measures developed for the U.S. population to the Japanese population. Regarding the first issue, an improvement can be made by assessing the correspondence of the JGSS occupational categories with the O*NET categories, which are more detailed than those of the GSS – though some issues remain as discussed below. As for the latter issue, two criteria are used for assessing validity regarding the application of particular occupational skills to Japanese data.

Generally, it is ideal to develop comparable occupational skill measures for the Japanese population, and there actually exists a Japanese version of the O*NET that provides occupational skill measures. However, unlike the U.S. O*NET occupational skill measures, the Japanese O*NET occupational-skill measures were not developed to enable linkages with other survey data, primary because of the selective and non-exhaustive use of occupational categories in measuring skill levels. Furthermore, compared with the U.S. occupational classifications, Japan’s occupational classifications are mixed with industrial classifications, and have fewer distinctions of occupational skill levels, and therefore they are less appropriate as categories to measure occupational skills. However, the JGSS classification has a distinct advantage in this respect, as explained in this paper. The characteristics of major occupational classifications in Japan are related to the historical development and genealogy of the standard occupational classifications in Japan. This paper also clarifies why major Japanese classifications, including the Japanese standard occupational classifications, have not adopted skill levels of occupations as a major criterion of occupational classifications.