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North American Industry Classification System

Overview

NAICS is a system for classifying establishments (individual business locations) by type of economic activity. Its purposes are:

(1) To facilitate the collection, tabulation, presentation, and analysis of data relating to establishments; and

(2) to promote uniformity and comparability in the presentation and analysis of statistical data describing the North American economy.

Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Estadistica, Geografiia Informatica (INEGI), Statistics Canada, and the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB), through its Economic Classification Policy Committee (ECPC), collaborated on NAICS to make the industry statistics produced by the three countries comparable. NAICS was implemented in 1997 to replace the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system. It was revised in 2002 and 2007. A 2012 revision is in process now.

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