The United States Department of Labor Career Aptitude Test Was Retired

No single test goes by that name. Since the 1940s the Department of Labor has built a family of career tools, and they measure three different things. Aptitude is how quickly you can learn and do certain kinds of tasks, like working out a sum, checking whether two names match exactly, or fitting small parts together. Interests are the activities you'd enjoy. Work values are the rewards you need from a job, such as security or independence. Only the first kind is an aptitude test, and it's the kind the department no longer offers.

Does the Department of Labor have a free career aptitude test?

No, not since 2021, though for about seventy years it did. O*NET, the department's career research program, retired the Ability Profiler on November 20, 2021, and its current list of career tools now shows the Interest Profiler as the only one still active. The Work Importance Locator, its work values tool, was retired in June 2024. So the free Department of Labor career aptitude test people search for is, in practice, an interest test. It's a good one. It just doesn't test ability.

What is the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB)?

The GATB was the Department of Labor's original aptitude test, a set of 12 timed tests covering nine aptitudes. The department's U.S. Employment Service built it during World War II, and state employment offices used it from 1947 on to counsel job seekers and send them to employers. The nine aptitudes were general learning ability, verbal, numerical, spatial, form perception, clerical perception, motor coordination, finger dexterity, and manual dexterity. Some parts were pencil and paper. Others were hands-on tasks with small parts, done against the clock.

A 1989 review by the National Academy of Sciences judged its quality adequate but raised two problems. There were few alternate forms, so copies could leak and people could be coached, and many sections were so tightly timed that guessing raised scores. The larger fight was over race-norming: from 1981 the Employment Service adjusted reported scores by racial group, a practice the Civil Rights Act of 1991 banned. Wikipedia goes deeper on the GATB's nine aptitudes and the race-norming dispute, and we explain its scoring rules in our GATB scoring guide.

From GATB to APTICOM, CareerScope, and the O*NET Ability Profiler

Computer versions came next. APTICOM appeared in the 1980s, and CareerScope, a desktop version of it, in 1995. CareerScope is still sold commercially today, and the Department of Veterans Affairs uses it in career counseling for veterans. The department's own successor was the O*NET Ability Profiler, rebuilt from the GATB after the 1989 review with fewer items, less time pressure on some parts, questions checked for bias, and a score report people could read without a counselor. What this means for a job seeker today is simple. The government's aptitude line ended with the Ability Profiler, and anyone who wants a measured read on their abilities now has to find it somewhere else.

Seven tools come up when people search for a government career test. Here is what each one measures, how you take it, and whether you still can.

Tool

Measures

Format

Time

Cost

Self-serve?

Status in 2026

Where to take it

O*NET Interest Profiler

Interests (six Holland areas)

30 like/dislike items online, 60 on paper

10 to 20 minutes

Free

Yes

Active

onetinterestprofiler.org

O*NET Ability Profiler

Nine aptitudes

11 timed exercises, 6 paper and 5 hands-on

About 2.5 hours

Was free

No, staff ran it

Retired November 2021

Nowhere official; manuals archived

O*NET Work Importance Locator

Six work values

Card sort ranking what you need from a job

Untimed

Was free

Yes

Retired June 2024

No longer offered

CareerOneStop Skills Matcher

Skills, rated by you

Self-ratings on workplace skills

Untimed

Free

Yes

Active

CareerOneStop.org

TAP CEPT workshop

Interests, aptitudes, work values

Two-day workshop with a facilitator

Two days

Free if eligible

No

Active

Your military transition office

ASVAB Career Exploration Program

Aptitude plus interests

Timed multiple-choice test

About 3 hours

Free at schools that take part

No

Active

A participating high school

CareerScope

Aptitudes plus interests

Timed, computer-based

About an hour

Sold commercially; free to eligible veterans through the VA

No, through a provider

Still sold

VA career counseling or a licensed provider

What is the O*NET Ability Profiler?

It was the Department of Labor's last free aptitude test, a set of 11 timed exercises run by trained staff at places like state workforce offices, schools, and rehab programs. Six were pencil and paper: Arithmetic Reasoning, Vocabulary, Three-Dimensional Space, Computation, Name Comparison, and Object Matching. Five were hands-on: Mark Making, Place, Turn, Assemble, and Disassemble. The full set took about 2.5 hours. A shorter paper-only version took an hour and a half to two hours and skipped the dexterity tasks.

Scores came back as percentiles on nine abilities. The report then compared the shape of your profile, meaning where you were strongest and weakest, with the typical profile for each occupation in O*NET, and grouped the matches by Job Zone. The archived Ability Profiler manuals and answer sheets are still posted for counselors and researchers, but O*NET no longer supports the test.

O*NET Interest Profiler (My Next Move)

When people talk about "the Department of Labor career test," this is usually the tool they took. It's free, it runs in a browser, and you don't need an account. You read short work activities, such as building kitchen cabinets or teaching a class, and say how much you'd like doing each one. Your answers sort into the six interest areas from John Holland's model: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. Your results connect to over 900 occupations. My Next Move now sends you to the standalone Interest Profiler site, where the test lives today. Our My Next Move career test page covers the tool in more depth.

How long does the O*NET Interest Profiler take?

Between 10 and 20 minutes, by O*NET's own count. The web version, called the Mini-IP, asks 30 questions, and the Short Form on paper asks 60. The long form and the old computerized version have both been retired, so guides that quote a 180-question test are describing something you can no longer take.

How to take the free Interest Profiler, step by step

1. Open the Interest Profiler site on a laptop rather than a phone, so the career lists at the end are easier to scan. No sign-up is needed.

2. Answer each activity by how much you'd enjoy it. Ignore pay and ignore whether you have the training. The test asks about liking, and answers bent toward what seems realistic blur the result.

3. Write down your top three interest areas in order, and do it before reading the job titles, so the titles don't talk you out of a letter you scored high on.

4. Pick the Job Zone that matches the training you have or would take on, then save or print the list before you close the page, so you have it when you start reading.

5. Choose five jobs from the list and read their O*NET task lists, as the results section below explains.

O*NET Work Importance Locator

This one measured work values, the things you need from a job to feel it's worth doing. It used six: achievement, independence, recognition, relationships, support, and working conditions. O*NET retired it on June 3, 2024, along with its computer twin, the Work Importance Profiler. If values are your question, CareerOneStop, a career site the Department of Labor sponsors, still runs free tools for skills and values. None of them time you or check your answers, so they measure what you report about yourself, and none of them test your ability.

Your top two interest areas say more than your top one

Your results rank all six interest areas. Look at your top two or three, not only the highest. Social paired with Enterprising points toward sales and management. Social paired with Investigative points toward work like nursing or counseling research. Same first letter, very different jobs.

Next, pick a Job Zone. O*NET's Job Zones run from 1 to 5 and describe how much preparation a job needs, from very little up to extensive, which usually means a graduate degree. Choose the zone that matches the training you already hold or intend to earn, and the job list drops from dozens of titles to a handful you can read in one go.

To turn that into a shortlist, pick five jobs, open each one's O*NET page, and read the list of daily tasks line by line. Cross off any where most of the tasks sound tiring rather than interesting. Whatever survives is worth an informational interview with a person already in that job. For a longer walk through Holland codes, see our guide to the Department of Labor interest test and its results and the Holland Code career test.

If you took the Ability Profiler before 2021, your report worked another way. Each ability got a percentile, so a 70 meant you outscored about 70 percent of the comparison group. Matches came from the shape of your scores rather than their height, so a middling but balanced profile could still fit a job well, and one very high score didn't guarantee a match.

What is the difference between the O*NET Interest Profiler and an aptitude test?

The Interest Profiler asks what you'd enjoy, while an aptitude test times you on tasks that have right and wrong answers. Picture someone who loves the idea of building furniture. The Interest Profiler will score them high on Realistic, but it can't tell whether their hands are quick and steady enough for fine carpentry, because it never hands them anything to build. The Ability Profiler did, in its way: its Assemble and Disassemble exercises timed people putting small parts together and taking them apart. Neither test looks at how you prefer to work, which is where the next section picks up.

The free tools that remain work best for people who don't yet know which fields to look at. Students fit that, and so does anyone coming back to work after a long break. School counselors and job centers use the Interest Profiler for exactly this, and it's a sensible first step. If your high school takes part in the ASVAB Career Exploration Program, a counselor can add a timed aptitude test to it at no cost.

Job seekers who walk into an American Job Center can get free career counseling and help reading their results. Centers are run locally, so the tests on offer vary. Some give basic skills or aptitude tests, usually to decide who can join a training program. Ask which test it is before you sit it.

Service members and their spouses have the best deal left. The Career Exploration and Planning Track is a two-day workshop in the Transition Assistance Program that assesses occupational interests, aptitudes, and work values, then turns them into a plan. For now it's the nearest match to a Department of Labor career test for veterans, and you sign up through your transition office. Veterans who have already left can ask the Department of Veterans Affairs for career counseling, which often includes CareerScope, a timed aptitude and interest test descended from the GATB that is still sold commercially. If you're weighing the ASVAB side as well, our guide to the military aptitude test explains the scores.

Career changers with ten or more years behind them are a different case. They usually know what they like. What they don't know is why a job that matched their interests still wore them out. An interest test can't answer that, and neither could the old Ability Profiler. That reader needs a read on how they work, and no government tool, current or retired, has ever scored it.

Is there a free government career aptitude test?

Only two, and each has a gate: the ASVAB and the CEPT workshop, and most civilians can't take either. The other free government tools measure interests, or ask you to rate your own skills, as CareerOneStop's Skills Matcher does. The ASVAB, the military's entry test, is one, and high schools in its Career Exploration Program give it to students at no cost. The CEPT workshop for people leaving the service is the other. Some state workforce offices also test aptitude for their training programs, so a phone call to your nearest American Job Center is worth making.

Which Department of Labor career test should I take?

Match the tool to the question you're asking.

If you want ideas for fields to explore, take the Interest Profiler online. It's free and done in twenty minutes, and the five steps in the tool-by-tool section above take you from start to shortlist.

If you'd rather have a person walk you through it, the Department of Labor's toll-free line, 1-877-US-2JOBS (1-877-872-5627), will point you to the nearest American Job Center, where a counselor can sit with you while you take it.

If you're leaving the military, sign up for CEPT through your transition office. It's the only Department of Labor program that still tests aptitude.

If an employer or apprenticeship asks for an aptitude score, it will name the test. Take that test, since no general career tool can stand in for it. Our page on aptitude test fees covers what the paid ones cost.

If you already know which fields interest you and are asking which one matches how you work, none of the Department of Labor tools cover it. That's the gap described above.

No official office still gives the O*NET Ability Profiler

Nowhere official, now. O*NET stopped supporting it in November 2021 and offers no technical help for it. A few offices or schools may still have old booklets and hand-scoring sheets. If someone offers you the Ability Profiler today, ask how they score it and which occupation data they match it against, because O*NET hasn't updated either one since it was retired.

Is the GATB still used?

Not by the Department of Labor. The Ability Profiler replaced it, and then the Ability Profiler was retired too. Its design lives on in CareerScope, a computer-based battery that is still sold commercially and that the Department of Veterans Affairs uses in veterans' career counseling. You'll also still see the GATB's name in older training paperwork. A "free GATB practice test" online is a practice site, never the official battery. For how the whole government lineup fits together, our O*NET career test page and our interest and aptitude test guide go further.

Go Beyond the Department of Labor Career Aptitude Test

Once you have interest results, you usually have too many fields, not too few. What sorts them is the part no free tool scores: how you make decisions, how you handle a team, and how you split your day between solo and shared work. Pigment's 20-minute assessment scores exactly those, and you can take it at home tonight.

Find the Jobs on Your List That Fit How You Work

Your interest results hand you a long list. Pigment shows your strengths and your working style, then points to jobs worth exploring first. The 36-page report is a single $79.99 purchase with no subscription.

See what fits you