Help for North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) for business services providers.

NAICS (most commonly pronounced as "nakes") is an industry classification system developed by the statistical agencies of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, respectively the United States Office of Management and Budget, Statistics Canada and Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática of Mexico.

Why these three countries? NAICS was created within the context of the North American Free Trade Agreement and is designed to be a common statistical framework to facilitate the analysis of the three economies and provide common definitions of the industrial structure of the three countries.

NAICS is the standard used by all Federal statistical agencies in classifying business establishments for the purpose of collecting, analyzing, and publishing statistical data related to the U.S. business economy. It was adopted in 1997 to replace the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system.

NAICS is a hierarchical structure composed of:

• Sectors with 2 digit codes
• Subsectors with 3 digit codes
• Industry groups with 4 digit codes
• Industries with 5 or 6 digit codes.

Example:

The two digit codes and descriptions for Sectors are:

Related sites and resources:

• NAICS page on U.S. Census bureau site
• NAICS page on Statistics Canada site
• Government Industrial information site for Mexico
• U.S. Census Bureau - Bridge between NAICS and SIC