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The Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) was a US classification system used to collect statistical information about business activities from 1937 to 1997. It has been replaced by the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS), but some organizations still use SIC codes. Each SIC code has four digits and is used to categorize different industries. The NAICS covers all of North America and uses six-digit codes. Complete lists of SIC and NAICS codes are available from government agencies.
The Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) was a classification system used in the United States between 1937 and 1997 to collect statistical information about business activities. It has been superseded by the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS), but some organizations continue to use SIC codes. The Securities and Exchange Commission, for example, has maintained SIC codes in its publications and discussions of economic issues, and it is not uncommon to see Standard Industrial Application codes in a variety of publications.
In the 1930s, manufacturing and industry were booming in the United States, and the government recognized that keeping statistics was extremely important to allow the government to track growth and economic progress. He developed the Standard Industrial Classification as a way to fit all companies in the United States into one category. The categorizations could be used for things like comparing different industries, analyzing economic performance in different states, and identifying trends in US industry such as the rise of women-owned businesses.
Each Standard Industrial Classification has four digits. The first two digits broadly represent the main industrial category, while the other two create a subtype. 0800, for example, is forestry, and some branches of the forestry industry can be identified with different two-digit codes to replace the “00”. Some examples of SIC codes include 2732 for book publishing, 3821 for laboratory apparatus, and 7800 for the film industry.
Using the Standard Industrial Classification, the US Census Bureau and other agencies that maintain and track statistics can maintain accurate data about the types of businesses in the United States. Instead of having to manually sort through records to look for video rentals, for example, one might enter “7841” to display data on video rentals in the United States.
The NAICS, an outgrowth of the Standard Industrial Classification, covers all of North America, not just the United States. Six-digit NAICS codes divide sectors into progressively smaller classifications, just like the SIC code, and this information can be used for a variety of purposes.
Complete lists of SIC and NAICS codes are available from various government agencies, along with conversions for people who want to know what the NAICS replacements for older SIC codes might be. Being able to convert can be useful when people want to compare statistics from different years or when they want to interpret data published with SIC codes from within the NAICS framework.
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