NS-SEC categories, sub-categories and classes

The National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-SEC) is a flexible and structured, occupationally based classification.

  • It may be derived in three ways (full, reduced and simplified), depending of the level of detail of employment status information available. These different methods allow the NS-SEC to be applied to registration and other administrative data, Census data and survey data - and to data of varying robustness.

  • It is structured so the operational categories offer users maximum flexibility in terms of possible and allowable collapses (within the underlying conceptual model of employment relations) to eight, five and three category analytic variables.

  • Although occupationally based, there are procedures for classifying the non-employed to the NS-SEC.

The table on the next page presents the analytic classes together with the fourteen functional and three residual operational categories of the NS-SEC. The functional categories represent a variety of labour market positions and employment statuses. These can be collapsed into the analytic versions of the NS-SEC as shown. L14 is an optional category while L15, L16 and L17 are the residual categories that are excluded when the classification is collapsed into classes. All of the operational sub-categories are the components required for bridging and continuity in relation to SC and SEG, rather than necessary categories in terms of the conceptual base of the NS-SEC.