NIOCCS Input File Format Options for Industry and Occupation Coding

Files uploaded to NIOCCS for industry and occupation coding must be in the NIOCCS 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 3 and only 3 fields.
• The 3 fields must be in the following order: Identifier, Industry Title, and Occupation Title.
• 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 200,000 records.
• Users cannot have more than 5 files (industry and occupation coding and crosswalk combined) queued for processing at any time.

Helpful tip #1: In order to maximize coding speed, please sort your files either by industry title then occupation title, or by occupation title then industry title.

Helpful tip #2: Check for Tab characters 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 for autocoding in NIOCCS.

Please download the example file in the NIOCCS File Format located here to familiarize yourself with the file format. Notice that there are 3 fields (Identifier, Industry Title and Occupation Title) separated by Tabs in every record.

The Industry Title field can contain either an industry description or a NAICS code. The entire file should contain Industry Titles with either industry descriptions or NAICS codes, but not a mix of both. Note that when using NAICS codes in your file's Industry Title field, NIOCCS will recognize valid NAICS codes from all NAICS versions: 1997, 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2017.

An example of a file in the NIOCCS File Format using NAICS codes in the Industry Title field is located here. There are 3 fields (Identifier, Industry Title and Occupation Title) separated by Tabs in every record, and NAICS codes are used in the Industry Title field.

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 or NAICS code	2	Alpha-Numeric	250	Free text description of an industry or a NAICS code. Examples for industry title: "Information Technology" or "541511"
Occupation Title	3	Alpha-Numeric	250	Free text description of a job title or an occupation. Example for occupation title: "Consultant" or "Web Developer/Designer"