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About O*NET Web Services

O*NET Web Services provides easy access to occupational data and career exploration tools for over 900 occupations, direct from one of the nation’s primary sources of occupational information. O*NET Web Services is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment & Training Administration, and developed by the National Center for O*NET Development.

What is O*NET?

The Occupational Information Network covers the entire U.S. economy with its SOC-based taxonomy. It contains a comprehensive framework describing the world of work, covering both worker and occupational requirements. The O*NET Program collects and publishes approximately 500 standardized ratings plus occupation-specific information for each of 900+ occupations.

The O*NET Database is updated quarterly with information collected from job incumbents, employer job postings, expert research, and other sources.

O*NET websites cover multiple audiences, from students to veterans to Spanish speakers to workforce professionals.

O*NET Web Services provides access to the full O*NET Database, along with the most popular features and tools from each of our websites.

Learn more about the O*NET Program at our Resource Center. Contact O*NET Customer Service (onet@onetcenter.org) for questions, comments, or feedback.

What’s in the API?

Data from the O*NET Database including:

  • Knowledge, education, and skills needed
  • Worker abilities and work environment
  • Occupation-specific tasks and job titles
  • Technical skills used on the job

Tools from O*NET websites including:

  • Keyword search for career exploration and intelligent occupation lookup
  • Military transition search for all branches
  • Interest Profiler assessment to help students and job seekers find a career they’ll love

Easy to Implement

  • REST API with full documentation and interactive demo before you sign up
  • HTTPS for privacy and integrity of requests
  • Choice of JSON or XML output
  • Straightforward account login
    • Server-side: industry-standard Basic authentication
    • Client-side: query string identifier plus CORS domain registration
  • Full working examples and connection libraries in several languages: Sample code on GitHub external site

Features in Detail

  • Keyword Search — both the My Next Move search and the OnLine occupation search are available for use in your career site. Our REST web services API returns occupations matching a word, phrase, title, or full or partial O*NET-SOC code. The results include the code and title of each matching occupation.
  • My Next Move Career Reports — concise, easy to read overviews for each occupation in My Next Move. Key knowledge, skills, and abilities are available for over 900 occupations. Our APIs also provide Bright Outlook and Green information, job outlook, and more.
  • Summary and Details Occupation Reports — detailed information from O*NET OnLine for over 900 occupations. Your application can include an occupation's most important or all tasks, knowledge, skills, abilities, tools and technology, and more.
  • Military Search — the military transition search used in My Next Move for Veterans is also available through our web services API. The search returns relevant O*NET-SOC occupations based on full or partial codes and titles from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard classification systems.
  • Spanish Keyword Search — the Spanish-language keyword search used in Mi Próximo Paso is part of our web services API. Occupation titles are returned, in Spanish, matching a Spanish word or phrase. A wide range of features from Mi Próximo Paso are also available, including detailed career reports and Interest Profiler questions and scoring.
  • Interest Profiler — include this useful career tool in your own site with our IFrame Widget. After adding a simple block of HTML code, users can take the O*NET Interest Profiler without leaving your career resources. For tighter integration, we also offer a REST web services API that provides scoring services and career results from the range of O*NET-SOC occupations. You can include this tool in English or Spanish. In addition, a "mini" version of the IP useful for mobile assessment settings is also available.
  • Database Services — get real-time, up-to-date access to all of the information in the downloadable O*NET Database. Retrieve data from any part of the database. Customize results by filtering and sorting based on multiple criteria.

Our reference manual has the details on these and other web services we offer. The services currently use the O*NET 29.0 Database.

Before You Sign Up

All O*NET data and Web Services access is free, but attribution is required in your applications. See our license.

The API is rate limited; contact us if you expect more traffic. Customers requiring extremely high volume or guaranteed uptime should consider using the downloadable O*NET Database as a local source of information, or caching common requests for performance. See all terms of service.

Sign up now