Military titles → civilian occupations
Extend the occupational map to job titles
An occupation-level relatedness map can also connect job titles to civilian work. Here, established title-to-SOC crosswalks link military job titles to civilian occupations, which provide starting points in the relatedness map. Job descriptions supply task evidence for inspecting those connections.
- 1
Build civilian profiles from postings
TitleMatch maps posting titles to occupations; TaskMatch retrieves task IDs from posting text. We aggregate these into occupation-task profiles and compare their task weights to build the posting-task relatedness model.
- 2
Extract tasks from military descriptions
TaskMatch retrieves the same task IDs from official military duty descriptions. We compare these military task profiles with the civilian posting profiles. For three worked examples, we also review whether the military text supports the retrieved tasks.
- 3
Connect job titles to the occupational map and compare with established crosswalks
Task similarity connects military job descriptions to civilian occupation-task profiles. Compare these rankings with established military-to-civilian crosswalks, and open shared tasks to inspect the source text. Crosswalk matches also provide starting points for exploring related civilian occupations.
What this shows: job titles and descriptions can extend an occupation-level map. The crosswalk supplies documented connections; task similarity supplies a separate comparison. Neither establishes a verified career transition.
59% recover a documented civilian match
Among military entries with a crosswalk occupation covered by our civilian data, the task-based model includes a documented match among its top 20 recommendations for 59% (647 of 1,091).
Supporting results, sources and code
This comparison uses tasks retrieved from military descriptions before the additional review of the three worked examples. Military crosswalk codes do not enter the task ranking. The reference is the Defense Manpower Data Center’s July 2024 military-to-civilian crosswalk, using its active entries and six-digit civilian occupation codes.
| Reference | Entries | Top 1 | Top 5 | Top 10 | Top 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Defense Department crosswalk | 1,292 | 17.3% | 31.0% | 39.1% | 50.1% |
| Occupation references in military manuals | 947 | 22.3% | 34.6% | 41.6% | 51.2% |
The table includes references outside the civilian comparison data. Restricting to entries with at least one covered reference gives 59.3% for the Defense Department crosswalk and 62.7% for military manuals. Entries can repeat a military occupation across source versions; grouped, future-effective and general-standard records are excluded. Tied rankings are averaged. Agreement with a crosswalk is distinct from recovery of observed transitions.
Results for each military entry (CSV) · Results by service (CSV) · Ranked civilian matches (CSV) · Analysis code (ZIP) · Source descriptions, crosswalk and coding (ZIP)
Army 15R, AH-64 Attack Helicopter Repairer, maps to Aircraft Mechanics and Service Technicians (49-3011). Select that civilian match and open its tasks to compare the official military duties with the retrieved task statements.
Explore documented civilian matches and the task evidence supporting the reviewed examples. The overall crosswalk comparison above covers the larger set of military titles; review of individual examples is separate from that comparison.
Download the connections
Data files and field guide · Connections · CSV · Complete navigator data · JSON
Explore the military-to-civilian connections
Explore documented civilian matches and the task evidence supporting the reviewed examples. The overall crosswalk comparison above covers the larger set of military titles; review of individual examples is separate from that comparison.