Industry Classification Guide - Which System to Use

Industry Classification Guide - Which System to Use

TL;DR: Your country and purpose determine which industry classification system to use. NAICS for North America, NACE for the EU, ISIC for global. This guide provides a decision tree, country reference, and side-by-side comparisons.

Decision tree

graph TD
  START["What do you need to classify?"] --> GEO{"Geographic scope?"}
  GEO -->|Single country| NATIONAL["Use national system\nsee table below"]
  GEO -->|Multi-country / Global| ISIC["ISIC Rev 4\n766 codes, UN standard"]
  GEO -->|North America| NAICS["NAICS 2022\n2,125 codes"]
  GEO -->|European Union| NACE["NACE Rev 2\n996 codes"]
  NAICS --> DETAIL{"Need SEC filing?"}
  DETAIL -->|Yes| SIC["SIC 1987\nstill required by SEC"]
  DETAIL -->|No| NAICS_DONE["Use NAICS 2022"]

Step 1: What is your geographic scope?

Single country - Use the national system for that country (see table below).

Multi-country or global - Use ISIC Rev 4 as your common denominator, then translate to national systems as needed.

North America (US, Canada, Mexico) - Use NAICS 2022.

European Union - Use NACE Rev 2 (or your country's national variant).

Step 2: What level of detail do you need?

Step 3: Is this for regulatory compliance?

If you are filing with a government agency, use the system they require:

Country-to-system quick reference

Major economies

Latin America

All countries use CIIU Rev 4 (the Spanish translation of ISIC Rev 4) with 766 codes: Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, Dominican Republic.

European Union (27 members + EEA)

All EU member states use NACE Rev 2 with national naming: ATECO (Italy), NAF (France), WZ (Germany), CNAE (Spain), PKD (Poland), SBI (Netherlands), SNI (Sweden), and others. The structure is identical - 996 codes with 1:1 mapping.

Comparing the major systems

graph LR
  subgraph North_America["North America"]
    NAICS["NAICS 2022\n2,125 codes\n6 levels"]
  end
  subgraph EU["European Union"]
    NACE["NACE Rev 2\n996 codes\n4 levels"]
  end
  subgraph Global["Global"]
    ISIC["ISIC Rev 4\n766 codes\n4 levels"]
  end
  NAICS <-->|3,418 edges| ISIC
  ISIC <-->|1:1 structure| NACE

NAICS 2022 vs ISIC Rev 4

NAICS 2022 vs NACE Rev 2

NAICS 2022 vs SIC 1987

How to translate between systems

# Translate NAICS 6211 to all equivalent systems
curl https://worldoftaxonomy.com/api/v1/systems/naics_2022/nodes/6211/translations

# Direct equivalences with match types
curl https://worldoftaxonomy.com/api/v1/systems/naics_2022/nodes/6211/equivalences

# Find NAICS codes with no NACE equivalent
curl "https://worldoftaxonomy.com/api/v1/diff?a=naics_2022&b=nace_rev2"

For systems without direct crosswalks, follow the translation path through hub systems (see the Crosswalk Map guide).

Domain-specific extensions

When a standard industry code is too broad for your use case, WorldOfTaxonomy provides domain-specific vocabularies:

These domain taxonomies are crosswalked back to their parent NAICS/ISIC sector codes, so you can drill down from a broad industry classification to specialized detail.