The National Occupational Classification (NOC) is the nationally accepted reference on occupations in Canada. It organizes over 40,000 job titles into 500 occupational group descriptions. It is used daily by thousands of people to compile, analyze and communicate information about occupations, and to understand the jobs found throughout Canada's labour market.
The NOC provides a standardized framework for organizing the world of work in a coherent system. It is used to manage the collection and reporting of occupational statistics and to provide understandable labour market information. The structure and content of the NOC are also implemented in a number of major services and products throughout the private and public sectors.
Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC), in partnership with Statistics Canada (STC), update the NOC according to 5-year Census cycles. Revisions are based on extensive occupational research and consultations conducted across the country, reflecting the evolution of the Canadian labour market.
We hope that your session on the NOC 2011 Web site is informative and helpful.
Methodology
The NOC is the authoritative standard that classifies and describes the occupations in the Canadian economy. It is the foundation for occupational statistics and descriptive labour market information. The NOC must be revised periodically to reflect developments in technology, organizations and language of work in order to remain accurate and useful. Revisions have been made in five year intervals coinciding with Census cycles.
Prior to the 2011 revision, HRSDC and STC held consultations with stakeholders. Qualitative and data users of the classification, such as sectoral organizations, professional associations, industry representatives, researchers and federal, provincial and territorial personnel were also asked to identify areas where changes could be required.
In some cases, consultations suggested that structural changes were necessary. By agreement with Statistics Canada, structural changes1 are considered over a ten-year time frame to allow users of statistics to compare data from different time periods. These longitudinal comparisons are important for identifying trends in the labour market.
The 2011 revision represents major structural changes resulting in the unification of HRSDC’s NOC and STC’s National Occupational Classification for Statistics (NOC-S). NOC 2011 eliminates the differences between the former structures and maintains the advantages of both systems. These include alignment of the NOC-S and NOC major groups, the use of a common numerical coding system, and the retention of the skill type and skill level framework of the NOC. View the Matrix for more detail.
Occupational research and analysis were undertaken to adress input provided through the consultations and to update occupational descriptive content for NOC 2011. Draft revision proposals were prepared and presented by analysts for review and deliberation in monthly meetings of the the HRSDC and STC joint working group. Decisions were based on research, consideration of classification criteria and statistical implementability. Changes, in addition to structural revisions and harmonization, reflect new occupational titles classified in existing groups, modifications of unit group descriptions, as well as corrections and enhancement of title indexes and concordances between English and French.
Future revisions of the NOC are expected to revisit the issue of structural changes as well as the need to accurately reflect the evolving characteristics of occupations in the labour market.
1Structural changes involve modifying the conceptual boundaries of occupational groups, moving occupations, aggregating or merging and splitting groups and changing the hierarchical coding framework of the classification structure. These types of changes have an impact on occupational statistics.
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Foreword and Introduction
For a better understanding of the extent of the changes made to the NOC 2011 edition, please refer to the Foreword in HTML format or
view Foreword (PDF Version, 54 kb).
The NOC organizes the world of work in a standardized and structured format. It provides descriptive information about occupations in the Canadian labour market. To learn more about the organizational structure of the NOC 2011 and its classification principles and criteria, please refer to the Introduction in HTML format or view the Introduction
(PDF Version, 106 kb).
Concordances
The significant revision undertaken to update the descriptive contents of the classification and to harmonize the NOC-S and NOC structures is presented in several concordances. The concordances identify the movement from NOC and NOC-S 2006 to the unifed NOC 2011.
Please refer to the Concordances in HTML format
or view the Concordances(PDF Version, 85 kb) to learn more.
Job Descriptions: An Employers' Handbook
This easy-to-use reference is designed to help small and medium-sized organizations
with their human resources management activities.
Based on National Occupational Classification (NOC 2006) content, this handbook can help
users develop job descriptions to hire employees, evaluate employee performance
and identify training needs.
Please refer to the Employers' Handbook in HTML printer friendly format
or view the Employers' Handbook (PDF Version, 611 kb)
to learn more.
Documents formats
To access the Portable Document Format (PDF) version you must have a PDF reader installed. If you do not already have such a reader, there are numerous PDF readers available for free download or for purchase on the Internet:
To view the RTF version, use the document conversion features available in most word processing software, or use a file viewer capable of reading RTF.