OSCA Maintenance Strategy Questionnaire

The Occupation Standard Classification for Australia (OSCA) is a standardised framework for storing, organising and reporting occupation-related information. It informs many of Australia’s important decisions involving statistical outputs and labour market analyses.

The OSCA maintenance strategy specifies the ABS’ plans to ensure OSCA reflects the contemporary labour market. The strategy includes the following three areas:

1. key components underpinning maintenance;
2. timing for each new update of the classification; and
3. the framework for prioritising proposed changes.

We seek your feedback on proposed details for these three areas to inform the maintenance strategy to be published in July 2025.

Please provide feedback through this survey by 4 April 2025.

Background

The ABS published a draft maintenance strategy in November 2022. It provided for annual updates of the classification. These updates would commence from 2025 following the release of OSCA 2024.

A new maintenance strategy is being designed to accommodate feedback received since November 2022, while recognising the need for regular updates to ensure the classification reflects the contemporary labour market. This includes feedback from key data producers which indicates they cannot adopt annual updates.