The study was conducted to identify occupational survival skills--the basic knowledges, traits, and competencies necessary to maintain a job. A list of 27 basic occupational survival skills was developed, involving the following areas: interpersonal relations and communications; personal characteristics; decision making and problem solving; job characteristics, health, and safety. A telephone survey instrument, utilizing these basic skills plus job attitude and demographic questions, was pilot-tested before interviewing 589 workers throughout Illinois. Responses were grouped into nine occupational classifications and analyzed. Chapters include: (1) Introduction, examining the problem, limitations, hypotheses, assumptions, and definitions; (2) Review of Related Literature; (3) Methodology, discussing study design, instrumentation, pilot test, study population, data collection, and analysis; (4) Discussion of Results, examining interviewing, sample characteristics, frequencies, means and discriminant analysis for survival skills, and frequencies for work satisfaction; and (5) Summary, Conclusions, and Recommendations. Nineteen tables and five figures supplement the text; survey instruments and supplemental tables are appended. It is recommended that studies be conducted to identify and compare a wider range of knowledges, traits, and competencies than was possible in the present study to promote meaningful job training based on work needs. (LH)