The FEC individual-contribution file has two self-reported fields that are, frankly, the most interesting columns in the whole database: employer and occupation. Both are free-text, both are capped at around 38 characters, and both are filled in by the donor at the moment they write the check.
The data is gloriously messy. We have observed a single donor file the same occupation eight different ways across eight different contributions: ATTORNEY, Attorney, Attorney at Law, LAWYER, Law, Partner, SR PARTNER, Retired. After some cleanup on the LobbyVault side, we roll these up into occupation categories on /occupations/.
What the top occupations actually look like
Across all cycles loaded into our individual-contribution table, the top occupation categories by total dollars contributed tend to land in this order:
- Retired — by far the largest single category. Includes retired doctors, lawyers, executives, academics, small-business owners. This is the single best predictor of major-donor behavior in the FEC data.
- Not employed / Homemaker — partly spousal giving, partly wealth-management reasons.
- Attorney / Lawyer — law firm partners are heavy donors on both sides of the aisle.
- Physician — especially plastic surgeons, orthopedists, and radiologists.
- CEO / Executive / President — any C-suite title rolled together.
- Real Estate / Developer / Investor — real estate is a unique bipartisan concentration.
- Finance / Investment / Investor — hedge-fund and private-equity donors.
- Consultant — often a catchall for recently-departed political staffers and former lobbyists.
- Engineer / Software Engineer — tech money, concentrated in CA/WA/NY.
- Self-Employed — often small business owners and solo professionals.
"Retired" being #1 is not an accident: major donors generally reach their peak giving years after they stop working, when they have liquid wealth and time on their hands.
The "lobbyist" line
A particularly useful filter is the lobbyist occupation tag. Donors who self-identify as lobbyists are a small share of all donors but a wildly disproportionate share of max-out contributions to sitting members of Congress in key committees.
If you open a committee detail page for, say, a House Energy & Commerce chair, you will see the "Top occupations" list skewed heavily toward:
- Lobbyist
- Government Relations
- Partner (usually at a law firm with a K Street practice)
- Attorney
- Consultant
That is the donor class of incumbency protection. It is also why members who lose committee gavels or leadership positions often see their fundraising drop 30–40% in the following cycle.
Where occupation data is misleading
A few caveats when you use this field:
- "Information Requested" — an FEC-standard placeholder the committee uses when it has solicited a donor's employer/occupation but not yet received an answer. Large blocks of "Information Requested" are usually an administrative flag, not a signal about the donor.
- Title inflation. "President" of a three-person consultancy counts the same as "President" of a Fortune 500 firm in the raw data. We try to offset this by weighting by dollar amount on the occupation-detail pages.
- Voluntary refusal. Donors can legally decline to disclose. This is rare above the $200 itemization threshold — committees are required to make a "best effort" — but a small residual noise category ("Self / Self / Self") remains.
- Couple-level giving. Spouses often file under each other's employer, leading to apparent "stay-at-home" contributions that are actually household decisions.
How to actually use it on LobbyVault
On any candidate detail page you will find a Top occupations card and a Top employers card. They answer different questions:
- Top occupations tells you what kind of work the campaign's donor base does.
- Top employers tells you which specific firms, hospitals, law firms, or universities those donors work for.
If the two agree — e.g. top occupations is "Attorney" and top employers is "Latham & Watkins, Kirkland & Ellis, Covington & Burling" — the signal is consistent and strong. If the two disagree, one of them is probably being distorted by a single mega-donor or a single bundler's network.
The /occupations/ index on LobbyVault lets you explore the reverse view: "which candidates do engineers give to the most?" "who is the top lobbyist-funded candidate in a given cycle?" That's a different and, for a policy analyst, often more useful question than asking about individual donors one at a time.