NIOCCS Input File Format for Crosswalk Coding

Files uploaded to NIOCCS for industry and occupation crosswalking must be in the NIOCCS Crosswalk File Format:

  • A standard text file.
  • Every line in the text file is a record.
  • Fields in each record are separated by Tab characters.
  • Every record must contain 7 and only 7 fields.
  • The 7 fields must be in the following order: Identifier, Industry Title, Occupation Title, Census Industry Code, Census Occupation Code, NAICS Code, SOC Code.
  • Files in Excel (.xls or .xlsx), Comma-Separated Values (.csv) or any other format will result in an error.
  • Files containing HTML-like character sequences will result in an error (i.e. "<", ">", "&lt", "&gt").
  • Files cannot contain more than 100,000 records.
  • Users cannot have more than 5 files (crosswalk and industry and occupation coding combined) queued for processing at any time.

Helpful tip: Check for Tab characters in the values you place in your Industry and Occupation Titles and replace with Space characters. Tabs in Industry and Occupation Titles are the most frequent source of errors when uploading files in NIOCCS.

Please download the example file in the NIOCCS Crosswalk File Format located here to familiarize yourself with the file format. Notice that there are 7 fields separated by Tabs in every record.

Field Field Sequence Format Max Length Comments
Identifier 1  Alpha-Numeric 50 Order and format of the identifiers is entirely up to you.

Examples for Identifier:
"0001" or "12345" or "ID12345"
Industry Title 2 Alpha-Numeric 250 Free text description of an industry.
Field is required, but can be left empty.
Content is used by NIOCCS "smart" crosswalk feature,
which peaks at Titles to select a code to crosswalk to when
there are multiple crosswalk code possibilities.

Examples for industry title:
"Elementary School"
Occupation Title 3 Alpha-Numeric 250 Free text description of an occupation.
Field is required, but can be left empty.
Content is used by NIOCCS "smart" crosswalk feature,
which peaks at Titles to select a code to crosswalk to when
there are multiple crosswalk code possibilities.

Examples for occupation title:
"Teacher"
Census Industry Code* 4 Alpha-Numeric 10 Census Industry Code that is to be crosswalked to the target version.
Field is required, but can be left empty.
Can be Census Occupation Code from 2000, 2002, 2010, 2012 or 2018.
File can contain a mix of different versions of Census codes.
Examples for Census industry code:
786 or 7860
Census Occupation Code* 5 Alpha-Numeric 10 Census Occupation Code that is to be crosswalked to the target version.
Field is required, but can be left empty.
Can be Census Occupation Code from 2000, 2002, 2010, 2012 or 2018.
File can contain a mix of different versions of Census codes.
Examples for Census occupation code:
231 or 2310
NAICS Code** 6 Alpha-Numeric 100 NAICS code that is to be crosswalked to the target version.
Field is required, but can be left empty.
Can be NAICS from any version: 1997, 2002, 2007, 2012 or 2017.
File can contain a mix of different versions of NAICS codes.
Examples for NAICS code:
6111 or 611110
SOC Code 7 Alpha-Numeric 10 SOC code that is to be crosswalked to the target version.
Field is required, but can be left empty.
Can be SOC code from any version: 2000, 2010 or 2018.
File can contain a mix of different versions of SOC codes.
Examples for SOC code:
25-2020

*  NIOCCS Crosswalking also supports 1990 Census codes, but only crosswalking from Census 1990 codes to Census 2000 codes. The entire file must be dedicated to crosswalking Census 1990 codes to Census 2000 codes.

** NIOCCS Crosswalking also supports SIC code to NAICS code crosswalking. SIC codes are placed in the NAICS field, and SIC codes can only be crosswalked to NAICS 1997 codes. The entire file must be dedicated to crosswalking SIC codes to NAICS 1997 codes.