North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)

On January 1, 2003 OSHA began using the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) for industry identification in its various data sets.

NAICS uses a six digit hierarchical coding system to classify all economic activity into twenty industry sectors. Five sectors are mainly goods-producing sectors and fifteen are entirely services-producing sectors. This six digit hierarchical structure allows greater coding flexibility than the four digit structure of the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system. NAICS allows for the identification of 1,170 industries compared to the 1,004 found in the SIC. For detailed information on the NAICS coding structure please visit the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Standard Industrial Classification has been replaced by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), but several OSHA data sets are still available with SIC-based data. For information on the Standard Industrial Classification system, please visit Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) System Search.