Instructions for entering occupations and industry

The reason for this change is to aid in the coding of the occupation data. This will allow us to collect multiple occupations on the Death Information screen and will require matching the occupation to the corresponding industry.

      • This change applies ONLY to the OCCUPATION and INDUSTRY fields on the Death Information (OBIT) screen.

      • DO NOT use the new rule on the 1930 and 1940 OCCUPATION and INDUSTRY fields.

      • It may help to consider the Occupation and Industry fields Occ1 and Occ2. These fields can each accept up to 250 characters. If you think you have input several hundred characters (DO NOT COUNT!) advance to the Industry field to enter additional information.

      • INDUSTRY will be input in parenthesis ( ) following the occupation.

      • Multiple OCCUPATIONs will be separated by semicolons.

New format:  OCCUPATION (INDUSTRY); OCCUPATION; OCCUPATION (INDUSTRY)

Note that you can still input an OCCUPATION without a corresponding INDUSTRY.

Continue to input RETIRED with its associated OCCUPATION i.e. RETIRED CARPENTER. In the coding process this will receive 2 codes, retired and carpenter.