Articles from prior issues of The Advocate

March/April, 1998

DOT Mirrors The Evolution of American Economy

WHO WOULD HAVE EVER THOUGHT up an idea such as the Dictionary of Occupational Titles? Where should you start on such a task? It’s truly a huge endeavor that has its roots in our nation’s history. In the mid 1930s, while the world was in the grips of the Great Depression, the US government established a joint federal and state employment system to try to deal with the run-away unemployment and underemployment of the times. This employment service was to catalog the types of jobs existing in our economy, noting frequency of openings in the various jobs in various locations around the country while obtaining applications from displaced workers, indicating past work experience and education. The employment service then tried to match job openings with qualified applicants. The first edition of the DOT, published in 1939, contained 17,500 definitions of jobs, alphabetized by title, and using five or six digit codes which separated types of work and level of skill. Then came World War II which changed many aspects of jobs. During the war, the DOT provided standard terminology and job classifications to aid in army recruitment and utilization of workers for essential industries. Many industries became more streamlined to aid in the war effort and new technologies were developed during the war which translated into phasing out some jobs, altering others, and creating new ones in order to continue research and maintain the new machines and systems. Three supplements were released to try to keep up with the many changes, but this became too cumbersome, so the second edition of the DOT was published in 1949, with 22,028 occupational definitions. During the Cold War, tensions built between the Communist Block and America, heightened particularly by the space race. Once again, the economy was revolutionized and jobs changed drastically. A major concern, as well, was that we, as a nation, develop our work force as we continued shifting from an agricultural society, and make the workers and our processes more efficient. The third edition of the DOT was published in 1965, under a green cover, and completely revamped the structure of the entries. The new descriptions indicated training time to learn the job, aptitudes required for success in the job, interests of people doing that type of work, temperaments (whatever that means), physical demands of the work, working conditions, work performed, and these were all classified into industries. This publication defined 21,741 jobs. No sooner had the third edition been released than work was under way to update the DOT again. America had decided that this tracking device of the evolution of our economy should be monitored and revisions proposed as they occurred. As information was compiled, it became evident that our economy was shifting from goods production to services. In 1977, the fourth edition was printed, under a red cover, containing over 2,000 new occupational definitions, 3,500 deletions, and the existing definitions went through a complete rewrite, leaving us with about 20,000 definitions. In this edition, language referring to sex and age was removed. Of course, this brings up into the early 1980s and the years of reducing the federal government (or at least a lot of talk about it) and cutbacks on federal programs. So, rather than rewrite the whole book, supplements were published in 1982 and 1986, modifying existing definitions and adding new descriptions which had been submitted by DOT users over the years. Eventually, it became more difficult to use the DOT with the supplements, and comments by agencies such as SSA reported that additional information was needed to make the book more usable. Efforts were focused on particular industries which have undergone the most change and in 1991, the fourth edition, revised, under a blue cover, was put out in a limited publication. This revision changed or added 2,452 definitions and reduced the number of industries from 220 to 140. In keeping with the technological advances of our time, these sizable texts are now being replaced (slowly) by CD-ROM texts. The computerized version, still the fourth edition, revised, is very useful in a lot of ways. Unfortunately, it does not do transferability of skills for you, but can be helpful in determining this issue. It is also helpful in finding jobs that can be cited which the claimant can return to and even in locating a description of the claimant’s past relevant work in the DOT. There are two computer formats which Missouri is currently sampling: one is known as the OPAL on CD-ROM, the other is on 3.5 inch disk which can be downloaded onto a hard drive and was originated in the SSA Denver Regional Office. Someday, counselors will be able to replace the 10 pound, seven inch thick volumes with one thin CD. (Of course, we have to all have PC’s first.)