National statistical institute

Supervisors - should be separated from the other workers, due to the differences in their functions and responsibilities. Supervisors in almost all industries are experts, whose skills are identical or similar to those of the workers on the sites of supervision but their functions are related to ensuring the compliance with the technology, norms and management in the other’s work. Specification of the supervising responsibilities is not possible using only the NCOD, there is a necessity to ask question, as it is made in the LFS.

It is difficult to code the occupation of people who work in their small agriculture farm and engaged in a whole production process, but have lower education. Sometimes they are coded as ‘Skill agricultural and fishing workers’ - occupational class 6, and sometimes as ‘Elementary occupations’ – major group 9.

As in our national classification the occupational groups are strongly related to the level of education, for people engaged in coding it is difficult to assess how the level of education of the individual should be taken into account.

There are groups, belonging to different occupational major groups (due to the different level of education required), which have the same name. This causes difficulties for coding especially in the cases where no data on educational level are available.

People working in public administration

According to our national legislation a common classification is applied for people working in public administration as civil servants. This classification takes into account mainly hierarchical positions. The hesitation exists whether all public servants should be included in group 247, according to ISCO-88 (COM), although being experts in different fields and performing different type of activities (for instance education environment, statistics etc.).

The other problem, he have recently met is how to transform the national occupational data for this occupational group (247) into ISCO-88, because there is no such group in it.
4. PROBLEMS CONCERNING THE PECULIARITIES IN NATIONAL CLASSIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONS AND DUTIES IN COMPARISON WITH THE ISCO 88 (COM)

a) Nursing and midwifery professionals (2230 ISCO - 88) are included in national classification in unit groups 3231 Nursing associate professionals and 3232 Midwifery associate professionals in NCOD-2005 by reason of national peculiarities concerning the usage of the educational level as an important criterion for major group definition.

b) Education methods specialists (2351 ISCO - 88) are missing in NCOD-2005 by reason of national peculiarities, in the real life there is no example for this occupation.

c) School inspectors (2352 ISCO - 88) are missing in NCOD-2005 by reason of national peculiarities, in the real life there is no example for this occupation.

d) Finance and sales associate professionals not elsewhere classified (3419 ISCO - 88) are missing in NCOD-2005 by reason of national peculiarities, so the associate professionals with the corresponding skills are included in other unit groups, found in the national labour market with the analogical headings in ISCO 88.

g) There are nine unit groups (4-digit level) in the NCOD-2005, which have not correct correspondence to the ISCO-88. In the next report data could be checked and comment.

Using the available information concerning the work on revision of the ISCO-08 on the ILO web site, the corresponding tables between ISCO-88 and ISCO-08 and NCOD-2005-ISCO-08 are developed and presented in the Annex 1.

We find that the problems could be only in the cases of breakdown of one position (unit group) in the existing classification to two or more positions in the revised classification. Now it is not clear if it will be real problem for ESeC.

In the next period we could see how the existing statistical data could be recoded by ISCO-08 and how it could be used for definition of the ESeC categories.

The Labour Force Survey is presently the most suitable source for testing the proposed version of European Socio-economic classification in Bulgaria because of the following reasons:

• 
  the sample is relatively high (in comparison with other national surveys);
  
• 
  all variables, necessary for derivation of the full version of ESeC are available (at least in the last two years).
  

Data are collected by face-to-face interview using the questionnaire. The survey collects data on economic activity of the interviewed persons by age, sex, education, urban/rural areas, marital status and occupation. For the unemployed information on the duration of unemployment, methods of job search, existence of previous work experience, etc. are also recorded.

• 
  occupation – National Classification of Occupation and Duties (2005), comparable to ISCO-88 at four digit level is used for data coding. In the LSF questionnaire two open questions are asked for this variable:
  

Data are coded in the regional statistical offices.

• 
  status in employment – data by status in employment are collected according to the International Classification on Status in Employment (ICSE-93) and include the following groups: employers, self employed without employees, employees, members of producers’ cooperatives, unpaid family workers. In 2007 questionnaire two questions is asked for this variable:
  

26.H.	Last week you were:
	(read out the answers from 1 to 5)
	- employee at private enterprise	1
	- employee at public enterprise	2	.
	- self-employed in own enterprise, business, profession, farm	3	q.26.J.
	- member of producer’s cooperative	4
	- unpaid family worker	5
	- do not know	6
26.J.	Do you employ other people?
	Yes	1
	No	2

• 
  number of persons working in local unit (available in LFS since 2001), The question follows exactly the EU LFS variable:
  

Data on number of persons working in local unit are collected for all people who are employed during the reference period and refer to the main job only. The total number of persons, including the reference person is recorded. Thus, if the reference person is employer the number of persons he/she employs is expected to be lower by 1 in most of the cases.

• 
  supervisory responsibilities (available since 2006). The corresponding question is included next to the questions on occupation in the LFS questionnaire:
  

The question on supervisory responsibilities is addressed to employees who are employed during the reference period and refer to the main job only.

The ESeC classification was tested using only data on persons who are employed during the reference period.

For the purpose of testing the ESeC – the User Guide and the syntax file proposed by the Institute for Social and Economic Research were used. The syntax file was adapted to the national LFS variables.

The variable 'ESeC employment status variable' is constructed as a combination of status in employment, number of persons working at the local unit and supervisory responsibility. Some transformations on national variables were necessary to be made for this purpose:

Status in employment

• 
  members of producer’s cooperatives are included in self-employed without employees;
  
• 
  unpaid family members are included in the group of employees as recommended in the User Guide.
  

After the composition of variables a derivation table was prepared, based on 2007 LFS data and was checked with the prototype.

The modal value for each ISCO minor group (3 digit) in terms of employment status is calculated and used to associate the ESeC code for missing answers on employment status variable (about 0.3 % of cases). Only one difference is found in comparison with the modal values which has been calculated using European Social Survey (ESS) included in the proposed matrix. The majority of employed people in ISCO minor group 911 – Street vendors and related workers according to Bulgarian LFS data belong to employees not to self-employed and the ESeC code 7 for missing answers is assigned.

Finally the following results are obtained on the structure of employed by ESeC.

It is noticed that the distribution is quite uneven. The shares vary from 27.3% for Routine occupation to only 2.8% for Lower supervisors and technicians.

The problems of quality of ESeC data are consequence of the problems of classifications and variables, used for its derivation.

• 
  ISCO classification – the problems have already mentioned in Part 3
  
• 
  Classification of Status in employment – difficulties exist to classify people working in agriculture, in particular those working in their own small family farm. Usually all members of the family are engaged in the agricultural production and there is no formal owner and manager of the farm. In some cases all members of the household are considered self employed, in the other cases one of the members (usually the head) is considered self-employed and the other - unpaid family workers. If such a farm uses employees the case became even more complicated;.
  
• 
  Number of persons working in local unit – relatively high rate of item non-response for this variable - about 25%, is registered in the labour force survey. Concerning employers however the non-response is quite lower – about 6%. The other problem is that the concept of ‘local unit’ is sometimes not very understandable.
  
• 
  Supervisory responsibility – it is a new variable for the LFS (available since 2006). The respondents meet difficulties to understand and to answer to the corresponding question. Not always supervision of children, e.g. teachers, and control of quality of goods are ignored. Large share of employees with supervisory responsibilities (except those in ISCO classes 1 and 2 ) is observed for the following occupational minor group: 314 - Ship and aircraft controllers and technicians; 315 - Safety and quality inspectors; 344 -Customs, tax and related government associate professionals; 345 - Police inspectors and detectives; 413 - Material-recording and transport clerks etc. The item non-response for this variable is negligible.
  

For the derivation of simplified ESeC the corresponding syntax file was used. It is based only on the ISCO minor group codes. Only one adjustment was made - for the ISCO minor group 911 – Steet vendors and related workers. They are recoded to ESeC code 7 (instead of 4) due to national peculiarity (already mentioned).

The distribution of employed by ESeC simple is presented in the following table:

Employed by European ESeC simple (LFS 2007)

ESeC Simple Class	Thousands	%
Large employers, higher mgrs/professionals	313.9	9.6
Lower mgrs/professionals, higher supervisory/technicians	391.1	12.0
Intermediate occupations	211.3	6.5
Small employers and self-employed (non-agriculture)	118.1	3.6
Small employers and self-employed (agriculture)	143.2	4.4
Lower supervisors and technicians	21.0	0.6
Lower sales and service	563.8	17.3
Lower technical	543.9	16.7
Routine	946.4	29.1
Total	3252.6	100.0