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The North American Industry Classification System will replace the Standard Industrial Classification, establishing a new measure of all industry in the United States, Mexico, and Canada.
Since the late 1930s, Federal statistical agencies have studied industries using definitions from the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) manual. The SIC was updated from time to time through revisions. But major changes in both the U.S. and world economies forced development of a new system for defining industries: the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). This article describes the Government's industry classification system, tracking its creation through the NAICS replacement of the SIC.
Classifying industries
For over 60 years, Government economists and statisticians have been gathering, analyzing, and comparing data for detailed industries in our economy. The former Bureau of the Budget (now the Office of Management and Budget) in the Executive Office of the President published the first SIC in 1939 to ensure that everyone worked from common definitions of those industries.
Through several revisions, the SIC governed the way economists and statisticians viewed industries in the U.S. economy. But several problems emerged as changes at home and abroad affected the way industries fit the SIC definitions. NAICS was designed to address those problems.
SIC revisions. Economies evolve, and some industries disappear even as others appear. For this reason, economists in the Executive Office of the President prepared extensive reviews and revisions of the SIC in 1946, 1958, 1967, 1972, and 1987, with minor revisions occurring between the major revision years. In every case, the revised SIC maintained the primary structure of the original classification schemes established in the...