What is O*NET?
O*NET (the Occupational Information Network) is a free, public database, maintained by the U.S. Department of Labor, that describes nearly every occupation in the American economy in a standardized, comparable format — what the work typically involves, how much preparation it usually requires, and what kind of interests and skills tend to fit it.
Where it came from
O*NET replaced the old Dictionary of Occupational Titles in the late 1990s. It's developed and maintained by the National Center for O*NET Development, under a grant from the Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration, and it's built from ongoing surveys of actual workers and occupational analysts rather than a one-time expert panel — which is why it gets periodically updated rather than frozen in time.
What's actually in it
O*NET publishes several kinds of data per occupation; the parts we use are:
- Job Zone — a 1-5 rating of how much preparation (education, related experience, on-the-job training) an occupation typically requires.
- RIASEC occupational interest profile — the Holland-code interest dimensions (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional) an occupation as a whole tends to draw on.
- Skill ratings — for each of 35 standard skills (10 basic, such as reading comprehension; 25 cross-functional, such as programming), a 1-5 importance rating and a 0-7 level, with the behavioural examples O*NET publishes at points along the level scale.
- The rest of the content model — tasks, knowledge, abilities, work activities, work context, required education, experience and training, technology skills, alternate job titles and related occupations, all shown on each occupation's profile.
O*NET also links to wage and employment outlook data that we don't currently use — we're describing what we've actually built with, not the whole of what O*NET offers.
Who uses it
Career counselors, state workforce agencies (it powers O*NET Online, the public career-exploration site), HR and job-matching software, and labor economics researchers all draw on O*NET as a common reference rather than building their own occupational taxonomy from scratch.
How BlissPoint Organization Viewer uses it
We've loaded O*NET's real published database — currently 1,016 occupations, each with its Job Zone, interest profile, skill ratings, tasks and the rest of the content model where O*NET has published them — into a free, public Occupation Atlas. A company building out its own job architecture can link any role to an O*NET occupation and pull in its typical skills as a starting point for that role's requirements.
This page includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), used under the CC BY 4.0 license; O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. ESCO occupations and skills are from the European Commission's ESCO classification, and the occupation crosswalk is the official ESCO–O*NET mapping by the ESCO Secretariat with USDOL/ETA. This service uses the ESCO classification of the European Commission. BlissPoint Analytics has modified all or some of this information: skill, task and descriptor ratings are rounded to one decimal, and ESCO occupations show Job Zone and interests copied from a crosswalked O*NET occupation. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications.