Industrial classification
The UK Standard Industrial Classification of Economic Activities (SIC) is used to classify industries by the type of activity they do.
The UK SIC originated in 1948, and has been subject to a number of reviews and upgrades. Data collected by HESA originally used the SIC established in 1992 (SIC92), but now uses the classification agreed in 2007 (SIC2007).
Occupational classification
The UK Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system is used to classify workers by their occupations. Jobs are classified by their skill level and content.
The UK introduced this classification system in 1990 (SOC90); it was revised in 2000 (SOC2000), 2010 (SOC2010).
SOC2020 was adopted for the 2018/19 Graduate Outcomes survey and 2021/22 Unistats record. The remaining HESA collections will adopt SOC2020 for the 2023/24 collections.
For the SIC2007 and SOC2020 interations of these coding frames there is an interactive presentaion of the data allowing the end user to restrict the list to show only those codes (at all levels) that relate to or are grouped with a selected code.
