Occupational Information Network

History

From 1938 to the 1990s, vocational lists and employment matching offered by the U.S. government were available through the book, The Dictionary of Occupational Titles or the DOT. The DOT was first published in 1938 and "emerged in an industrial economy and emphasized blue-collar jobs. Updated periodically, the DOT provided useful occupational information for many years, for example through the NOICC/SOICC system. But its usefulness waned as the economy shifted toward information and services and away from heavy industry." With the shift in the economy, plans developed to replace the book format of the DOT with an online database. A limited use, preliminary version was released in December 1997, followed by a public edition in December 1998.

ONET classifies jobs in job families (functional areas which include workers from entry level to advanced, and may include several sub-specialties). After the third major revision of ONET realigned all ONET occupations to conform to the newly mandated Standard Occupational Classification (SOC)), ONET, with less than 1,000 listed occupational categories, compares to over 13,000 occupations in the last published DOT.

Overview

The O*NET system varies from the DOT in a number of ways. It is a digital database which offers a "flexible system, allowing users to reconfigure data to meet their needs" as opposed to the "fixed format" of the DOT; it reflects the employment needs of an Information society rather than an Industrial society; costs the government and users much less than a printed book would, and is easier to update as new data is collected.

For each job, O*NET provides the following information:

• Personal requirements: the skills and knowledge required to perform the work
• Personal characteristics: the abilities, interests, and values needed to perform the work
• Experience requirements: the training and level of licensing and experience needed for the work
• Job requirements: the work activities and context, including the physical, social, and organizational factors involved in the work
• Labor market: the occupational outlook and the pay scale for the work

References

References

1. [http://www.onetcenter.org/overview.html About O*NET]
2. [http://www.onetonline.org/find/descriptor/browse/Interests/ O*NET OnLine: Interests]
3. "ONET® Data Collection Overview at ONET Resource Center".
4. "View Information Collection Request (ICR) Package".
5. "View Information Collection Request (ICR) Package".
6. [http://www.bls.gov/opub/ooq/1999/Spring/art01.pdf Replace with a database: O*NET replaces the Dictionary of Occupational Titles] {{Archive url. link. (2013-07-09)
7. "US Department of Labor/O*NET Center".
8. Matthew Mariani. "O*NET Update".
9. Schultz & Schultz, Duane. (2010). "Psychology and work today". Prentice Hall.