Issue Brief: Public Health Occupations and the Standard Occupational Code System

The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system is the federal standard for categorizing occupation data, used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to collect and analyze workforce information. However, the current SOC and North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes lack the granularity needed to accurately enumerate the governmental public health workforce in state, local, Tribal, and territorial health departments.