In 2025, the American Community Survey (ACS) modified the educational attainment question. The updated educational attainment question collapses the three lowest educational attainment values, “No schooling completed,” “Nursery or preschool,” and “Kindergarten,” into “Less than grade 1.” As a result, the educational attainment variable was reduced from 24 values in 2024 to 22 values in 2025.

Coders at the National Processing Center (NPC) rely on the educational attainment data when assigning occupation codes to certain job title write-ins provided by survey respondents. Due to a delay in updating the coding system, coders at NPC continued using the previous educational attainment categories. As a result, occupations with high educational attainment requirements were coded to occupations with a lower educational attainment requirement.

Industry and occupation write-ins that were fully coded by the industry and occupation autocoder were not affected by this error.

Data users should use caution when comparing the following occupations with previous years: