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ISCO 88 groups jobs together in occupations and more aggregate groups mainly on the basis of the similarity of skills required to fulfil the tasks and duties of the jobs. Two dimensions of the skill concept are used in the definition of ISCO 88 groups:
- skill level, which is a function of the range and complexity of the tasks involved, where the complexity of tasks has priority over the range; and
- skill-specialisation, which reflects type of knowledge applied, tools and equipment used, materials worked on, or with, and the nature of the goods and services produced. It should be emphasised that the focus in ISCO 88 is on the skills required to carry out the tasks and duties of an occupation and not on whether a worker in a particular occupation is more or less skilled than another worker in the same or other occupations.
Jobs: In the context of ISCO-88 a job is defined as Aa set of tasks and duties which are (or can assigned to be) carried out by one person@.
Skill level: Only a few broad "skill level" categories can usefully be identified for international comparisons. The 1976 version of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) was used to define the ISCO-88 skill levels, but these definitions can easily be re-formulated with reference to the revised ISCED-1997. This formulation of the definitions does not mean, however, that skills can only be obtained by formal education or training. Most skills may be, and often are, acquired through experience and through informal training, although formal training plays a larger role in some countries than in others and a larger role at the higher skill levels than at the lower. For the purpose of the ISCO-88 classification system, determining how a job should be classified is based on the nature of the skills that are required to carry out the tasks and duties of the job not the way these skills are acquired. Nor is it relevant that the job incumbent may have skills not demanded by the job.
Skill specialisation: Skill specialisation can be indicated both broadly and more narrowly and is related to subject matter areas, production processes, equipment used, materials worked with, products and services produced, etc. The words used to describe the subject matter, production processes, etc. therefore have to be used as labels for the core sets of skills with which occupations are concerned. The same type of words may be used to describe the type of activity, i.e. the industry, of the production unit. For some workers it will therefore be possible to "predict" the occupation in which they are working with a fairly high degree of success, knowing how they are classified by industry. This does not mean that ISCO-88 is using industry as a classification criterion (except in a few cases where it is directly relevant), only that skills in fact are linked to products, materials, etc. which are the determinants of the industry of the establishment in which the work is carried out. The conceptual difference between the two types of classifications should not be forgotten, even though it may be partly obscured by the correlation between them and by the terminology used.
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