The European Socio-economic Classification

Table 1: The European Socio-economic Classification

ESeC Class	Common Term	Employment regulation
1	Large employers, higher grade professional, administrative and managerial occupations	Higher salariat	Service Relationship
2	Lower grade professional, administrative and managerial occupations and higher grade technician and supervisory occupations	Lower salariat	Service Relationship (modified)
3	Intermediate occupations	Higher grade white collar workers	Mixed
4	Small employer and self employed occupations (exc agriculture etc)	Petit bourgeoisie or independents	–
5	Self employed occupations (agriculture etc)	Petit bourgeoisie or independents	–
6	Lower supervisory and lower technician occupations	Higher grade blue collar workers	Mixed
7	Lower services, sales and clerical occupations	Lower grade white collar workers	Labour Contract (modified)
8	Lower technical occupations*	Skilled workers	Labour Contract (modified)
9	Routine occupations*	Semi- and non-skilled workers	Labour Contract
10	Never worked and long-term unemployed	Unemployed	–

* If analysts wish to identify agricultural workers separately from others, classes 8 and 9 may be sub-divided in to 8a, 8b, 9a and 9b. In each case sub-classes 8b and 9b would be for farm workers. ISCO minor groups 600 and 610-613 go to 8b. 614 and 615 could go here if analysts wished to include forestry and fishing workers in 8b. ISCO 920 and 921 form class 9b. Readers should note that in cases where we refer to minor groups ending with a zero (e.g. 600, 610, 920), this refers to the convention that this code is employed where it is not possible (either because of lack of information or because of the need to ensure respondent anonymity) to code occupation more precisely to a particular minor group.