HISCO Occupational Coding

HISCO, the Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations, is a coding scheme that translates the messy free-text occupational descriptions found in historical records into a single standardized, hierarchical classification. Built by van Leeuwen, Maas, and Miles on the framework of the modern ILO ISCO-68, it lets a 'cordwainer' in eighteenth-century England, a 'cordonnier' in France, and a 'Schuhmacher' in Germany all resolve to the same shoemaker code. Occupational titles are the single richest indicator of social and economic position in pre-modern records, appearing in censuses, marriage registers, tax lists, and directories. But their idiosyncratic spelling, multilingual diversity, and archaic vocabulary make raw comparison impossible. HISCO provides the controlled vocabulary and coding rules that turn these strings into analysable data, forming the indispensable first layer beneath class schemes, mobility studies, and occupational structure reconstruction.