Work Context Index
How the index is built
Every value in the index is a published O*NET mean rating, and every order is arithmetic over those values that this page states in full. No language model chose an occupation, wrote a number or decided what counts as quiet. The index can be checked rather than trusted.
Source data
O*NET 30.3 Database, text distribution, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration. Files used: Work Context, Work Context Categories, Content Model Reference and Occupation Data. Generated on 2026-09-05. The version is pinned to 30.3 to match every other O*NET-derived dataset on this site, so two RoleSprint pages can never disagree about one occupation because they read different releases.
Wage, education, employment and outlook come from a second official source: BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, Table 1.2 Occupational projections, 2025–35, and worker characteristics, 2025 (Employment in thousands). Wages are 2025 medians; growth is the 2025-35 projection.
Which Work Context elements are used
O*NET publishes 57 Work Context elements. The index uses 28: the ones that describe a condition a person might want less or more of, and that are measured on an intensity or frequency scale. The two categorical elements, Work Schedules and Duration of Typical Work Week, are excluded because their means are category codes rather than intensities and cannot be ranked. Exposure elements with narrow relevance (radiation, disease, whole-body vibration, cramped spaces, burns and cuts) are not published as rankings.
| Element | Question put to incumbents | Scale ends |
|---|---|---|
| Contact With Others4.C.1.a.4 | How much does this job require the worker to be in contact with others (face-to-face, by telephone, or otherwise) in order to perform it? | 1 = No contact with others; 5 = Constant contact with others |
| Deal With External Customers or the Public in General4.C.1.b.1.f | How important is it to deal with external customers (as in retail sales) or the public in general (as in police work) in this job? | 1 = Not important at all; 5 = Extremely important |
| Telephone Conversations4.C.1.a.2.f | How often do you have telephone conversations in this job? | 1 = Never; 5 = Every day |
| Face-to-Face Discussions with Individuals and Within Teams4.C.1.a.2.l | How frequently does your job require face-to-face discussions with individuals and within teams? | 1 = Never; 5 = Every day |
| Public Speaking4.C.1.a.2.c | How frequently does your job require public speaking (one speaker with an audience)? | 1 = Never; 5 = Every day |
| Work With or Contribute to a Work Group or Team4.C.1.b.1.e | How important is it to work with or contribute to a work group or team in this job? | 1 = Not important at all; 5 = Extremely important |
| Coordinate or Lead Others in Accomplishing Work Activities4.C.1.b.1.g | How important is it to coordinate or lead others (not as a supervisor or team leader) in accomplishing work activities in this job? | 1 = Not important at all; 5 = Extremely important |
| Physical Proximity4.C.2.a.3 | To what extent does this job require the worker to perform job tasks physically close to other people? | 1 = I don't work near other people (beyond 100 ft.); 5 = Very close (near touching) |
| Conflict Situations4.C.1.d.1 | How frequently are there conflict situations the employee has to face in this job? | 1 = Never; 5 = Every day |
| Dealing With Unpleasant, Angry, or Discourteous People4.C.1.d.2 | How frequently does the worker have to deal with unpleasant, angry, or discourteous individuals as part of the job requirements? | 1 = Never; 5 = Every day |
| Dealing with Violent or Physically Aggressive People4.C.1.d.3 | How frequently does this job require the worker to deal with physical aggression of violent individuals? | 1 = Never; 5 = Every day |
| Time Pressure4.C.3.d.1 | How often does this job require the worker to meet strict deadlines? | 1 = Never; 5 = Every day |
| Consequence of Error4.C.3.a.1 | How serious would the result usually be if the worker made a mistake that was not easily correctable? | 1 = Not serious at all; 5 = Extremely serious |
| Level of Competition4.C.3.c.1 | To what extent does this job require the worker to compete or to be aware of competitive pressures? | 1 = Not at all competitive; 5 = Extremely competitive |
| Freedom to Make Decisions4.C.3.a.4 | How much decision making freedom, without supervision, does the job offer? | 1 = No freedom; 5 = A lot of freedom |
| Determine Tasks, Priorities and Goals4.C.3.b.8 | How much freedom does the worker have in determining the tasks, priorities, or goals of the job? | 1 = No freedom; 5 = A lot of freedom |
| Importance of Being Exact or Accurate4.C.3.b.4 | How important is being very exact or highly accurate in performing this job? | 1 = Not important at all; 5 = Extremely important |
| Importance of Repeating Same Tasks4.C.3.b.7 | How important are continuous, repetitive, physical activities (like key entry) or mental activities (like checking entries in a ledger) to performing this job? | 1 = Not important at all; 5 = Extremely important |
| Spend Time Sitting4.C.2.d.1.a | How much does this job require sitting? | 1 = Never; 5 = Continually or almost continually |
| Spend Time Standing4.C.2.d.1.b | How much does this job require standing? | 1 = Never; 5 = Continually or almost continually |
| Spend Time Walking or Running4.C.2.d.1.d | How much does this job require walking or running? | 1 = Never; 5 = Continually or almost continually |
| Spend Time Using Your Hands to Handle, Control, or Feel Objects, Tools, or Controls4.C.2.d.1.g | How much does this job require using your hands to handle, control, or feel objects, tools or controls? | 1 = Never; 5 = Continually or almost continually |
| Outdoors, Exposed to All Weather Conditions4.C.2.a.1.c | How often does this job require working outdoors, exposed to all weather conditions? | 1 = Never; 5 = Every day |
| Indoors, Environmentally Controlled4.C.2.a.1.a | How often does this job require working indoors in an environmentally controlled environment (like a warehouse with air conditioning)? | 1 = Never; 5 = Every day |
| In an Enclosed Vehicle or Operate Enclosed Equipment4.C.2.a.1.f | How often does this job require working in a closed vehicle or operate enclosed equipment (like a car)? | 1 = Never; 5 = Every day |
| Exposed to Sounds, Noise Levels that are Distracting or Uncomfortable4.C.2.b.1.a | How often does this job require working exposed to sounds and noise levels that are distracting or uncomfortable? | 1 = Never; 5 = Every day |
| Exposed to Hazardous Conditions4.C.2.c.1.d | How often does this job require exposure to hazardous conditions? | 1 = Never; 5 = Every day |
| Wear Common Protective or Safety Equipment such as Safety Shoes, Glasses, Gloves, Hearing Protection, Hard Hats, or Life Jackets4.C.2.e.1.d | How often does this job require wearing common protective or safety equipment such as safety shoes, glasses, gloves, hearing protection, hard hats or life-jackets? | 1 = Never; 5 = Every day |
What a value is, and what it is not
Each value is O*NET's scale CX figure: the mean of incumbent responses on the question's own five-point scale. The anchors differ by question (frequency for deadlines and outdoor work; amount for contact; importance for exactness; seriousness for consequence of error) and the index keeps each on its own scale. Nothing is rescaled to 0-100 and no value from one question is compared with a value from another. Where a mean is shown beside an anchor, the anchor is the nearest scale point, or the two points the mean sits between.
Values are read from the 30.3release with a precision of two decimals. Values O*NET marks “Recommend Suppress” are dropped, not estimated: 6 values across the 28 elements. An occupation without a value for a selected measure is excluded from that ranking rather than scored as neutral.
Who answered
O*NET records the source of each occupation's Work Context ratings. In this release: 668 occupations from surveys of job incumbents; 210 occupations from occupational expert panels; 16 occupations from O*NET analyst ratings (newer or transitioning occupations). Incumbent samples are typically a few dozen respondents per occupation, so a difference of a tenth of a point between two occupations is not meaningful. Rankings are published as percentiles among all occupations partly for that reason: they say where an occupation sits in the distribution, not that it beats its neighbour.
Percentile rank
For one measure, every occupation with a value is sorted by that value. An occupation's percentile is the share of occupations strictly below it plus half of those tied with it, over the number with data. Ties share a mid-rank. Where the preferred direction is “less”, the percentile is subtracted from 100, so “lower than 92% of occupations” and “higher than 92% of occupations” are exact complements.
Percentiles are always taken over the full population of 894 occupations. A restricted list (for example, occupations paying above the median) reports where each occupation sits among all occupations, not among the subset it was filtered into, so the same occupation has the same percentile on every page.
A displayed percentile is a presentation value: rounded to a whole number and shown between 1 and 99. A mid-rank percentile never actually reaches 0 or 100, but rounding can take the bottom occupation of 894to 0 and the top to 100, which would read as “lower than 100% of occupations” — a statement that includes the occupation itself. The rounding and the clamp affect only what is printed. Every comparison, every average and every ordering on this site uses the unrounded value, so two occupations shown as the same percentile can still be ordered, and the dataset download carries the raw O*NET means rather than any percentile at all.
Combined rankings
A combined ranking places each occupation on several measures at once. Each measure becomes a percentile in the preferred direction, and the percentiles are averaged with equal weight. The figure shown is that mean percentile, labelled as such. It is a rank average, not a suitability score, and it is not a probability of anything. An occupation must have a value for every component to appear.
Ties on the mean are broken first by how many components sit in the preferred top third, then by BLS employment (a larger occupation is a more useful answer to more people), then by O*NET-SOC code so the order is deterministic.
The 4 combinations published as pages, and their components:
- Jobs with the least contact with people of any kind
Contact With Others (lower); Deal With External Customers or the Public in General (lower); Face-to-Face Discussions with Individuals and Within Teams (lower); Telephone Conversations (lower). Answers the search phrase “jobs for introverts”, which O*NET does not measure directly.
- Jobs with the lowest measured work pressure
Time Pressure (lower); Conflict Situations (lower); Dealing With Unpleasant, Angry, or Discourteous People (lower); Consequence of Error (lower); Level of Competition (lower). Answers the search phrase “low stress jobs”, which O*NET does not measure directly.
- Jobs with the most independent work
Freedom to Make Decisions (higher); Determine Tasks, Priorities and Goals (higher); Work With or Contribute to a Work Group or Team (lower). Answers the search phrase “jobs for people who like to work alone”, which O*NET does not measure directly.
- The most physically active jobs
Spend Time Walking or Running (higher); Spend Time Standing (higher); Spend Time Using Your Hands to Handle, Control, or Feel Objects, Tools, or Controls (higher); Spend Time Sitting (lower). Answers the search phrase “active jobs”, which O*NET does not measure directly.
BLS join
O*NET-SOC codes extend SOC with a decimal suffix. The join takes the code before the decimal and looks up the BLS line item with that SOC. 867 of 894 occupations match a line item; the rest show no wage or outlook rather than a borrowed group figure. BLS summary rows covering a whole occupation group are refused for the same reason. One documented alias is applied: O*NET's Mental Health Counselors (21-1014) maps to the BLS row for Substance abuse, behavioral disorder, and mental health counselors (21-1018).
Restricted lists
Three restrictions are published, each a threshold BLS itself states in the same table:
- That pay above the U.S. median: a BLS median annual wage above $50,980, the 2025 median for all U.S. occupations.
- Without a bachelor's degree: a BLS typical entry-level education below a bachelor's degree (no formal credential, high school, some college, a postsecondary award or an associate's degree).
- That are growing faster than average: projected employment growth above 3.5% over 2025-35, the BLS projection for all occupations.
A restricted list is published only when at least 12 occupations qualify and at most 15 of the unrestricted top 25 remain in the restricted top 25. A restriction that leaves the answer essentially unchanged is a heading swap, and this site does not publish those. Of 63 possible restricted lists, 42 are published.
Those two numbers are an editorial rule about which pages are worth publishing, not a statistical threshold and not a claim about occupations. They are stated here because a reader is entitled to know why a combination they expected to find does not exist; nothing else on the site treats them as a benchmark, and no occupation is described by them.
What the index does not tell you
It does not measure stress. O*NET's Work Context questions ask about observable conditions of the work — how often there are deadlines, conflict, angry people, serious consequences for an error, competition — not about how anyone feels while doing it. Pages that answer the phrase “low stress jobs” rank those components and say so on the page. Whether that combination is what you mean by stress is your judgement, and nothing here predicts how stressful a particular job will feel to you.
It does not assess personality, temperament or health, and it makes no claim about who a job suits. People searching “jobs for introverts” are usually looking for work with less frequent interaction, and O*NET measures those conditions directly: contact with others, dealing with external customers, face-to-face discussions and telephone conversations. That page ranks the work on those four measures. It does not assign a personality type to an occupation, and no page here does.
It describes occupations, not jobs. Two postings in the same occupation can differ enormously in every one of these conditions. The rankings narrow a search; they do not evaluate an opening. That is what the Job Fit Analyzer does with a specific posting and your own evidence.
It is a snapshot of O*NET 30.3 and BLS 2025. O*NET updates occupations on a rolling basis; the index is regenerated from the release it names, and the version appears on every page and in the dataset.
Reproducing the index
Download the dataset as JSON or CSV. Each occupation row carries the O*NET-SOC code, the 28 mean ratings, the source type, and the BLS fields. The generator reads the O*NET text distribution and the BLS table as published and applies only the rules on this page, so any list on the site can be rebuilt from the file and this description.
This dataset includes information from the O*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. RoleSprint has modified all or some of this information. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications.
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