Uncovering Occupational Complexity: A Blueprint for Measuring Within-Job Hybridity and Across-Jobs Mixing in U.S. Labor Force

• In Event: Measurements and Methods for Understanding Dynamics in Occupations, Work, and Organizations

Abstract

Occupational categories are not only a key source of identity for individuals (Durkheim 1893; Emmison and Western 1990; Hughes 1958); they also constitute a central infrastructure of social science and public statistics, structuring how we measure inequality, track labor market changes, and analyze careers (Grusky and Sørensen 1994; Grusky and Galescu 2005). Yet a growing body of research suggests that people’s work does not always fit neatly into a single occupational category—and that this complexity is systematically erased by single occupational coding in statistical analysis. How, then, can we uncover the complexity of work, and what would that mean for our understanding of labor market dynamics and inequality?

This paper argues that prevailing survey conventions obscure key forms of occupational dynamics by presuming that workers occupy one—and only one—occupational position at a time. The paper presents a blueprint for measuring what we call occupational complexity using nationally representative U.S. survey data from 1984 to 2024. Rather than reporting empirical findings, it details a replicable measurement strategy designed to recover dynamic occupational configurations that remain hidden in standard single-code data.

Building on prior research introducing the concept of “polyoccupationalism” (Hénaut, Lena and Accominotti 2023), the project distinguishes two mechanisms that generate occupational complexity: within-job occupational hybridity and across-jobs occupational mixing. It then proposes concrete measurement procedures for operationalizing each mechanism in large-scale survey data, using computational text analysis, longitudinal harmonization of occupational codes, and linkage to occupational-level characteristics. In doing so, the project contributes new tools for analyzing structural change, occupational boundary crossing, and stratifying mechanisms within the contemporary occupational system.

Authors

• Fabien Accominotti, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Elle Zhilan Fang, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Léonie Hénaut, CNRS, France