SSYK

Definition

SSYK, or Standard for Swedish Occupational Classification, is a hierarchical structure used to describe the Swedish labor market. SSYK is owned by Statistics Sweden (SCB) but the Swedish Public Employment Service (Arbetsförmedlingen) uses a variant with a number of modifications at the fourth level. More information about the variant can be found in the section on Af-SSYK below.

Description

SSYK is a directory and classification of occupations. SSYK aims to make visible occupations that exist in the labor market. At the same time, SSYK serves as a structure for international reporting of data related to the Swedish labor market.

The current version of SSYK, SSYK-2012, is developed by, among others, the SCB (Statistics Sweden) and Arbetsförmedlingen, based on the international precursor ISCO (International Standard Classification of Occupations).

In the SSYK structure, occupations have been divided and grouped into four levels. The most comprehensive level consists of ten broad occupational areas. Each occupational area forms a hierarchy that becomes more occupational-specific the further down you go. The diagrams below explain both how the SSYK structure is generally constructed, and what a selected part of it might look like.

graph TD;
    A(occupation field/one digit level) -->|narrower| B(main group/two digit level)
    B -->|narrower| C(occupation group/three digit level)
    C -->|narrower| D(unit group/four digit level)

graph TD;
    A(2 - Yrken med krav på fördjupad högskolekompetens) -->|narrower| B(26 - Yrken med krav på fördjupad högskolekompetens inom juridik, kultur och socialt arbete m.m.)
    B -->|narrower| C(261 - Jurister)
    C -->|narrower| D(2611 - Advokater)

Af-SSYK

Arbetsförmedlingen employs a modified version of the SSYK structure's fourth level, information about it can be found here.

SSYK level 4

Information on how Arbetsförmedlingen uses the fourth level of SSYK can be found here.

Regarding naming conventions

Often, and not least within Arbetsförmedlingen, the term "ccupation group" is used to refer to what is referred to in the SSYK structure as "unit group". In the Taxonomy, these groupings are called SSYK level 4 (or ssyk-level-4 in the database and API). In the same spirit, the term "occupation field" is used to refer to collections of SSYK level 4 groups, when in the SSYK structure the same label is used to designate the top node in the hiearchy.