TPC-Journal-V5-Issue1

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 1 6 Results Occupational Titles in the Census for Six Kinds of Work, 1960–2010 For the first question, we examined the number of occupational titles used in the census and O*NET, and categorized these in relation to the six areas of work. Occupational titles provide schemas for career exploration using Holland’s (1997) RIASEC codes—tools for the exploration and examination of occupational information. As in previous studies (Reardon et al., 2007), the Realistic area included many more named occupations in the census than the other five areas (see Table 1, updated with 2010 data). For example, the 2010 census specified 211 occupations in the Realistic area and 283 occupations in the other five areas combined. Only 19 occupations were identified in the Artistic area. Overall, occupations in the Enterprising area increased from 27 in 1960 to 88 in 2010. Finally, 282 occupations were included in the 1960 analysis, which increased to 465 in 1970, 502 in 1980 and 500 in 1990, dropped to 434 in 2000, and increased again to 494 in 2010. Table 1 also shows that occupational titles were not equally distributed across the six areas of work over the past six decades and have changed very little during this period. For example, the Realistic area consistently has the most occupational titles and the Artistic area the fewest. Figure 1 shows the average percentages of Table 1 Number and Percentage of Census Occupations by Six Kinds of Work, 1960–2010 Census Year 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 Kind of Work N % N % N % N % N % N % R 141 50 216 46 238 47 241 48 186 43 211 43 I 40 14 51 11 59 12 60 12 51 12 57 11 A 14 5 18 4 14 3 10 2 9 2 19 4 S 39 14 70 15 47 9 51 10 48 11 64 13 E 27 10 75 16 100 20 95 19 95 22 88 18 C 21 7 35 8 44 9 43 9 45 10 55 11 Total 282 100 465 100 502 100 500 100 434 100 494 100 Figure 1. Percentage of occupational titles used in U.S. census over 6 decades.