History of Work - HISCO
History of Work via Occupational Titles: HISCO, HISCLASS, HISCAM
HISCO stands for the Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations. It is used worldwide by all major international historical databases. It is based on ISCO, created and in use by statistical agencies all over the world: International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) | International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO). Thus HISCO connects past and present, as well as the local and the global. It also connects to measures of social class and social status, and work traits such as skills and economic specialisation as derived from occupational titles.
HISCO allows for all occupational titles in the world over the past centuries to be linked to short descriptions of work categories. HISCO builds on ISCO68 and has a tree-like structure with 9 'major' groups, 76 'minor' groups, 296 'unit' groups and 1675 'micro' groups. The 'leaves' of the tree are formed by the ten-thousands of occupational titles that fall under these 1675 groups. Moving up or down the tree you can find related occupational groups. You can in addition find short definitions of the tasks and duties of an occupational group. HISCO also has subsidiary variables to capture additional information in the historical sources that are not already captured in the Hiscodes itself such as family relations (‘wife of’), temporal relationships (‘former’) or workstatus (‘master’, ‘subordinate’). HISCO has been made by expert historians from major databases and taylored to historical sources. The book HISCO - historical international standard classification of occupations was published in 2002 by Leuven University Press. Authors: Marco H.D. van Leeuwen, Ineke Maas and Andrew Miles. For the HISCO tree and the auxilary variables, see: Assets - History of work (all graph datasets) - HistoryOfWork - Druid & Get HISCO occupational group description for occupation - History of Work - Druid For technical information, see: History of work (all graph datasets) - HistoryOfWork - Druid
Coding. As HISCO is in use by all major historical databases, there are many datasets in various languages already coded in HISCO. Some coded occupations are available via: Assets - History of work (all graph datasets) - HistoryOfWork - Druid Currently the University of Southern Denmark operates a automated coding device: https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/en/publications/breaking-the-hisco…
For a crosswalk from the IPUMS/NAPP version of HISCO to HISCO, see Richard Zijdeman at https://github.com/rlzijdeman/o-clack/tree/master/crosswalks/occhisco_t…. To code into the HISCO-family of measures of social class, social status, skill and other occupational traits, one needs to first recode from IPUMS HISCO into standard HISCO.
For a crosswalk from OCC1950 in the USA census to HISCO, see Rick Mourits at https://datasets.iisg.amsterdam/file.xhtml?fileId=35528&version=1.0
HISCO-BASED MEASURES
These include a big class scheme (HISCLASS), a status scale (HISCAM), and a micro class scheme as well as measures of economic specialization and skill. (for recodes see: GitHub - cedarfoundation/hisco: Classification of HISCO codes to HISCLASS, SOCPO and HISCAM social class systems)
HISCLASS
Based on HISCO is HISCLASS: A Historical Social Class Scheme. Leuven University Press 2011, authors M.H.D. van Leeuwen and I. Maas
HISCAM
Also based on HISCO is a continuous status scale HISCAM: Lambert, P. S., Zijdeman, R. L., van Leeuwen, M. H. D., Maas, I., & Prandy, K. (2013). The construction of HISCAM: A stratification scale based on social interactions for historical comparative research. Historical Methods, 46, 77-89. https://doi.org/10.1080/01615440.2012.715569 Open access: The Construction of HISCAM: A Stratification Scale Based on Social Interactions for Historical Comparative Research Recodes at: CAMSIS: HISCAM project; See also: Get HISCO and HISCAM score for occupation in given language - History of Work - Druid
A HISTORICAL MICROCLASS SCHEME
Apart from a ‘big class’ scheme and a continuous status scale, there is also a Hisco based microclass scheme: Griffiths, D., Lambert, P. S., Zijdeman, R. L., van Leeuwen, M. H., & Maas, I. (2018). Microclass immobility during industrialisation in the USA and Norway. Acta Sociologica, 62(2), 193-210. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001699318766231
For MEASURES OF ECONOMIC SPECIALIZATION, SKILL AND INDUSTRIALIZATION based on HISCO see:
(a) van Leeuwen, M. H. D. (2020) “Studying Long-Term Changes in the Economy and Society Using the HISCO Family of Occupational Measures,” in Hamilton, J.H., Dixit, A., Edwards, S., and Judd, K. (eds.) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance. Oxford: Oxford UP https://oxfordre.com/economics/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190625979.0…
(b) Maccelli F, van Leeuwen MHD. Deciphering long-term labor skill development in Italy, 1871–2011. Social Science History. 2025;49(1):173-202. doi:10.1017/ssh.2025.11 – see notes for recodes. Open access: Deciphering long-term labor skill development in Italy, 1871–2011 | Social Science History | Cambridge Core IMAGES of workers all over the world can be connected to HISCO, see: HISCO and Wikidata Image - International Institute of Social History - Druid
CONNECTIONS TO THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD: ISCO88, ISCO2008 AND ISEI. Various crosswalks between different version of ISCO can be found at the ILO: International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) - ILOSTAT; See for this and for crosswaks from ISCO to measures of social status such as ISEI can by found at: HARRY GANZEBOOM'S Tools for occupation status measures for ISCO-68
The HISCO book has a brief chapter 6 which lists the few recodes from ISCO68, as well the new HISCO-groups
The HISCO Database
