What are your chances under Canada’s new National Occupational Classification?

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Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and Statistics Canada recently released the new National Occupational Classification (NOC) 2021 for data collection purposes.

ESDC’s programs are expected to start the implementation process of the NOC 2021 in late 2022 as survey and census data based on the new classification becomes available.

The National Occupational Classification (NOC) is Canada’s national system for describing occupations.

You can search the NOC to find where an occupation is classified or to learn about its main duties, educational requirements or other useful information.

The National Occupational Classification (NOC) is the national reference on occupations in Canada. It provides a systematic classification structure that categorizes the entire range of occupational activity in Canada for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating occupational data for labour market information and employment-related program administration. Occupational information is of critical importance for the provision of labour market and career intelligence, skills development, occupational forecasting, labour supply and demand analysis, employment equity, and numerous other programs and services.

An occupation is defined as a collection of jobs, sufficiently similar in work performed to be grouped under a common label for classification purposes. A job, in turn, encompasses all the tasks carried out by a particular worker to complete their duties.

The basic principle of the classification of the NOC is the kind of work performed. Job titles are identified and grouped primarily in terms of the work usually performed, this being determined by the tasks, duties, employment requirements, and responsibilities associated with each occupation. Factors such as the materials processed or used, the industrial processes and the equipment used, the degree of responsibility and complexity of work, as well as the products made and services provided, have been taken as indicators of the work performed when combining jobs titles into occupations and occupations into groups.

Every ten years, the NOC undergoes a major structural revision whereby the framework of the classification and the existing occupational groups are reviewed.

The NOC 2021 is the result of a major revision cycle that involved in-depth research, analysis, and assessment of the input received through consultations and occupational research. Input from the public and stakeholders has been an integral part of the revision process.

Search. Search by job title or search by NOC code. The NOC comprises about 30,000 job titles gathered into 500 unit groups, organized according to four skill levels and ten broad occupational categories. Unit groups are based on similarity of skills, defined primarily by functions and employment requirements. Unit groups can often be linked directly to one occupation (such as NOC 3113 – Dentists) or to more than one occupation (such as NOC 2271 – air pilots, flight engineers and flying instructors). Each unit group provides a short description of its associated occupation(s), lists its main duties and employment requirements, and provides examples of job titles.

Students, workers, employers, career and vocational counsellors, educational and training organizations use the NOC on a daily basis to support career and vocational decisions. The classification is also used to support policy development and program design and administration as well as service delivery.

The NOC has been developed as part of a collaborative partnership between Employment and Social Development Canada and Statistics Canada. The two departments also work together to maintain and update the NOC. The NOC 2016 version focused on the contents of individual unit groups, without affecting the structure of the classification. Updates to the content of the NOC 2016 will continue on a regular basis.

Who uses the National Occupational Classification? NOC is a system for describing the occupations of Canadians. It gives statisticians, labour market analysts, career counsellors, employers, and individual job seekers a standardized way of describing and understanding the nature of work. Each group uses the NOC for various reasons:

Economists and statisticians, to guide the collection and compilation of data.

Labour market researchers, to understand the underpinnings of the statistics they use.

Government analysts, to guide policy decisions, to develop systems for training, for recruiting and job matching, to allocate spending for labour market programs, and for immigration selection procedures.

Educational counsellors and students, for career planning and exploration purposes.

Job seekers, employment counsellors, and employers, to make effective use of labour market information services.

How can I learn more about the National Occupational Classification? An NOC tutorial is available online for individuals who wish to develop an understanding of the classification system. This tutorial is self-directed and allows individuals to study specific parts of the NOC.

You can access the tutorial home page at noc.esdc.gc.ca.

Why can’t I find my job title in the National Occupational Classification?

The NOC contains about 30,000 job titles in each of Canada’s official languages. While the listing in the Index is not meant to be exhaustive, it does provide extensive coverage of commonly used and understood titles in the economy and of more specific titles found in many occupational areas.

The list is updated on an ongoing basis to add emerging job titles and remove obsolete ones. Still, many job titles used everyday in the labour market are not included in the list of job titles found in the NOC.

Here are a few reasons why:

The job title is very specific and not used often enough to be added to the list. Instead, a more generic job title, which encompasses these very specific job titles, is used.

For instance, in unit group 4011 – University professors and lecturers – there are currently 117 different job titles. Yet, many existing job titles are not included because they are too specific and they can be linked to a more generic one. This is the case for the job title “biology professor – university” which is used in the NOC to capture all job titles associated with distinct biology teachers such as all microbiology teachers and their subspecialties (molecular virology, molecular biology, immunology, genetics, etc.).

The job title is fairly recent and more analysis is required before including it in the list of job titles.

Summary of changes: The new NOC 2021 includes structural changes such as the addition, aggregation or merging, and splitting of unit groups as well as the reorganization of certain groups across broad occupational categories and Training, Education, Experience and Responsibilities (TEER) categories.

The new NOC 2021 also:

Overhauls the current four-category NOC “Skill level” structure by introducing a new six-category system representing the level of TEER required for entry in an occupation.

Adopts a five-tiered hierarchical arrangement of occupational groups with successive levels of disaggregation containing broad occupational categories, major groups, sub-major groups, minor groups, and unit groups.

Introduces a brand new five-digit codification system to replace the current four-digit system.