Federal Register, Jan. 21, 2009

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has acted  on PHI’s suggestions in adopting new definitions of direct-care jobs in a planned revision to the Standard Occupational Classifications (SOC) system. The labor market information systems of both the federal government and each state use the SOC codes and definitions to measure employment, track wages, and project employment growth.

“I’m hopeful that these changes will lead to improved counting of direct-care workers at both the federal and state levels,” said Dorie Seavey, PHI’s director of policy research. “Reliable hard data on numbers of workers and their wages is a critical ingredient of  good policy making about  eldercare/disability services, but for some time now, these occupational definitions have been out of date or have mixed direct-care workers with other workers who provide indirect services.”

As previously reported (“PHI Calls for Changes in Federal DCW Job Classifications“), in response to a solicitation for comments from the federal government, in July 2008 PHI recommended changes to the three main categories used to track direct-care workers at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The government considers revisions to its Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) categories every ten years.

The Federal Register of Jan. 21, 2009 (pdf) indicated that PHI’s recommendations had had an impact.  Then, in early February, the SOC Policy Committee (SOCPC) publicly responded to PHI’s suggestions, announcing the following changes:

• The Healthcare Support Occupations major group “Nursing Aides, Orderlies, and Attendants” will be disaggregated into “Nursing Assistants” and “Orderlies.” The occupation of Nursing Assistant “will continue to include Nursing Aides, Nursing Attendants, and Nursing Care Attendants because they perform work that is too similar to distinguish.”
• The definition for “Home Health Aides” will be modified.
• The title of “Personal and Home Care Aides” will be changed to “Personal Care Aides” and the definition will be modified to clarify distinctions between this job title and that of Home Health Aides.

Longstanding confusions about the category definitions for direct-care workers have led to difficulties in classifying direct-care jobs and making accurate employment and wage estimates.

“Even though we know this is one of the largest workforces in the country,” says Seavey, “one that contains some of the top jobs in terms of growth potential — data collection in this area has been plagued by confusion on the part of workers, consumers, employers and policymakers about which workers and tasks are captured by each of the three SOC codes.”

OMB has now requested that the 2010 Standard Occupational Classification Manual be prepared for publication by the end of 2009. Committee members are completing definitions, and agencies with occupational classifications systems are developing crosswalks from their existing systems to the 2010 SOC.