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Unit groups in most cases will consist of a number of detailed occupations. For example, as a separate occupation nuclear physicist belongs to ISCO-88 unit group 2111 Physicists and astronomers, which belongs to minor group 211 Physicists, chemists and related professionals, which is part of sub-major group 21 Physical, mathematical and engineering science professionals of the major group 2 Professionals. The major group structure of ISCO-88 is shown below in Table 1.

Table 1

ISCO-88 major groups and skill level

Major group

1	Legislators, senior officials and managers
2	Professionals
3	Technicians and associate professionals
4	Clerks
5	Service workers and shop and market sales workers
6	Skill agricultural and fishery workers
7	Craft and related workers
8	Plant and machine operators and assemblers

9         Elementary occupations
0         Armed forces

ISCO skill level
-
4th 3rd
2nd
2nd
2nd 2nd
2nd
1st
-

Eight of the ten ISCO-88 major groups are delineated with reference to four broad skill levels. These four ISCO skill levels have been defined in terms of the educational levels and categories of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED). Five of the eight major groups, i.e. 4, 5,6, 7 and 8 are considered to be at the same skill level and are distinguished by reference to broad skill specialisation groups. Skill level references are not made in the definitions of two major groups (Legislators, senior officials and managers and Armed forces), because other aspects of the type of work were considered more important as similarity criteria, i.e. policy making and management functions, and military duties, respectively. As a result there are significant skill level differences within each of these two major groups. However, the sub-major and minor groups of major group 1 have been designed to include occupations at similar skill levels.

Administrative and managerial occupations
All occupations which consist of jobs in which the workers have mainly legislative, administrative or managerial tasks and duties should be classified to major group 1 'Legislators, senior officials and managers'. In ISCO-68 they were partly classified to major group 2 (Administrative and Managerial Workers) and partly to other major groups.
'Working proprietors' are to be classified according to whether their tasks and duties are mainly similar to those of managers and supervisors or to those of other workers in the same area of work. This is because the status of 'working proprietor' is seen as related not to type of work performed but to 'status in employment' - corresponding to the 'self-employed' and 'employer' categories of the International Classification of Status in Employment (ISCE). One self-employed plumber may have
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mainly managerial tasks but another may do mainly the same work as a salaried plumber, depending for example on the size of the firm. In the former case the job should be classified with managers and in the latter case with plumbers.

'Craft' occupations and 'operative' occupations
To cope with the issue of different skill requirements for jobs with similar purposes due to difference in technologies used, a distinction is made at the major group level between occupations that are essentially craft-oriented, and occupations that are essentially oriented towards the operation of tools, machinery and industrial plants.

Occupations which are craft oriented consist of skilled jobs directly involved in the production of goods where the tasks and duties require an understanding of and experience with the natural resources and raw materials used and how to achieve the desired techniques and practices, but they may also use more technologically advanced tools and machines, provided that this does not change the basic skills and understanding required. Modern machines and tools may be used to reduce the amount of physical effort and/or time required for specific tasks, or to increase the quality of the products. The tasks and duties of jobs in occupations which are oriented towards the operation of tools, machinery and industrial plants require an understanding of what to do with the machines to make them work properly, of how to identify malfunctioning and of what to do when something goes wrong. The skills required are oriented towards the machines and what they are doing rather than to the transformation process or its results. Occupations where the tasks and duties consist of assembling products from component parts according to strict rules and procedures are considered to belong to the same major group as the machine-oriented occupations. Jobs which only require low or elementary skills and little or no judgement are classified to occupations in major group

9. Armed Forces
As in ISCO-68, jobs in the armed forces should be classified in a separate major group 0 'Armed forces', even if the jobs involve tasks and duties similar to those of civilian counterparts.

Apprentices and trainees
Both 'apprentices' and 'trainees' should be classified according to their actual tasks and duties as, if needed, these two groups may be separately identified through the 'status in employment' classification. ISCO-68 recommended that apprentices should be classified to the occupation for which they are being trained, but that trainees be classified according to their actual tasks and duties.

Classifying 'multiple' jobs
The problem of classifying jobs which have a broad range of tasks and duties should be handled by the application of some priority rules. i.e. some tasks and duties are given priority in determining the occupational category to which a job should be classified, such as:

1. in cases where the tasks and duties are associated with different stages of the process of process of producing and distributing goods and services, the tasks and duties related to the production stages should take priority over associated tasks and duties, such as those related to the sale and marketing of the same goods, their transportation or the management of the production process (unless either of these tasks and duties dominates). For example, the worker who bakes bread and pastries and then sells them should be classified as 'baker', not as 'sales assistant'; the worker who operates a particular type of machinery and also instructs new workers in how to operate the machine should be classified with the machine operators; the taxi driver who drives his/her own car and also keeps the accounts should be classified with motor-vehicle drivers; and
2. in cases where the tasks and duties performed require skills usually obtained through different levels of training and experience, jobs should be classified in accordance with those tasks and duties which require the highest level of skill. For example: there are a number of jobs whose tasks and duties most of the time require a set of relatively easily obtained skills, and where the workers are also expected to have skills which require more training or experience which enables them to cope with unexpected and infrequent situations, for instance, to avoid accidents or injuries. It is recognised that a certain amount of judgement and adjustment to national circumstances will be necessary in the choice and application of these priority rules.

Implementing ISCO-88 as a European Union Standard
Some of the countries within the European Union have recently developed a new or revised national occupational classification based on ISCO-88 (e.g. Denmark, Italy) or on the same basic structure (e.g. United Kingdom). Other countries, like France and Germany, have well established national occupational classifications which do not link directly with ISCO-88. Greece and Portugal have adopted ISCO 88 (COM) as their national classification, with minor local variations. ISCO 88 (COM) represents the most detailed level of ISCO-88 which all community countries consider feasible to relate to their national classifications. Additionally, a number of practical problems arose in the development of a common statistical interpretation of ISCO-88. These problems are discussed below.

Managerial occupations
ISCO-88 makes a clear distinction between Corporate managers and General managers, in terms of the total number of managers required to manage an enterprise, organisation or an internal department. Where this total exceeds two, the manager is classified as a Corporate manager, otherwise as a General manager.
This raised operational problems, regarding the possibility of making this type of distinction on the basis of information normally available. It was decided to use the total number of employees within the administrative unit as proxy information, because this would be more commonly available (or more easy to collect) than information about the number of managers. Accordingly, managers working in organisations with fewer than 10 employees are classified as General managers. To highlight this difference between ISCO-88 and ISCO 88 (COM) the title of the occupational category has been changed to Managers of small enterprises.

Jobs in public administration

The most difficult area for the interpretation of ISCO-88 within a common cross-national application relates to the treatment of jobs in public administration. Difficulties stem from the use of bureaucratic titles/grading systems to denote rank, pay, seniority, qualification, and the need for a consistent relationship between such titles/grades and the structure of ISCO-88. These difficulties are compounded through factors such as the often non-homogeneous nature of public service occupational categories in national occupational classifications.
Additionally, National Statistical Institutes stated a clear preference for the inclusion within ISCO 88 (COM) of an administrative category for public service occupations within major group 2 (Professionals). Accordingly, the following schema, illustrated as Table 2, is proposed for the coding of jobs in public administration.
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