The local, state, and Tribal government public health workforce is the backbone of the US public health infrastructure, providing services crucial to health, safety, and national biosecurity. To determine whether the workforce can provide needed services, we must understand how many individuals are in this workforce, what they do, how much they get paid, and what training they have. However, the standard occupational classification (SOC) codes used by the US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics to collect workforce data do not match well with several public health occupations, creating challenges in researching the workforce.

This article aims to determine which public health job titles clearly match to a SOC code and where there are gaps between SOC codes and public health occupations.