North American Industry Classification System, 2012

Published only once every five years, the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is an indispensable volume of official industry codes used by businesses, libraries, and other establishments and individuals to complete tax returns, grant requests, and fill out other forms and to improve analyses and comparisons of different industries.

NAICS officially replaced the U.S. Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system in 1997. It provides a consistent system of economic analysis across the three NAFTA nations—Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

NAICS is used by U.S. statistical agencies to facilitate the collection, tabulation, presentation, and dissemination of data relating to establishments and to provide uniformity and comparability in the presentation of statistical data describing the U.S. economy. These statistics are used by all kinds of businesses, government agencies, policy analysts, academics and researchers, and the general public.

NAICS is a comprehensive system covering all economic activities. The 2012 edition of NAICS supersedes the 2007 edition published in May 2007. The 2012 edition includes new and emerging industries, several title changes, and clarification of industry definitions.

This edition contains four parts:

Part I: Titles and Descriptions of Industries provides a detailed description of all sectors from Sector 11 Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing, and Hunting to Sector 92 Public Administration

Part II: List of Short Titles has been created for the use of those who find that space limitations preclude the use of the full title for the dissemination of data classified to NAICS

Part III : Appendixes A and B maps the changes for 2012 NAICS to the 2007 NAICS in 2012 NAICS sequence (Appendix A) and 2007 NAICS sequence (Appendix B)

Part IV: AlphabeticIndex of all 1,065 industries

In addition, there is a section on frequently asked questions about economic classifications, a detailed list of the 2012 NAICS United States structure, and a directory of selected federal government agencies.