Archived – Revision of the North American Industry Classification System

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July 3, 2008

The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is currently being revised. The revised NAICS will be available in 2012, and will be known as NAICS 2012.

At this time, Statistics Canada is soliciting input from data producers and data users to ensure their needs continue to be met by NAICS. Proposals for changes to NAICS should be submitted to standards-normes@statcan.gc.ca. Guidelines for the revision of NAICS classes are presented below to assist you in providing input into the NAICS revision process.

Input is requested by September 30th, 2009. Decisions on proposed revisions will be made by January 2011, following a review within Statistics Canada, with other government departments and non-government entities, and with our counterparts at the Mexican Instituto Nacional de Estadistica, Geografia e Informatica (INEGI) and the Economic Classification Policy Committee (ECPC) of the United States acting on behalf of the Office of Management and Budget. Statistics Canada, INEGI and ECPC collaborated on NAICS to make the industry statistics produced by the three countries comparable; they will continue to do so for NAICS 2012. You may send more than one submission, if that enables you to comment earlier.

Guidelines

Submissions may be made for any industry, existing or newly created. Proposals for the modification of an existing industry should contain information on the rationale for the change and demonstrate an improvement to its description. Proposals for the addition of a new industry should contain information on the grouping criteria for creating the industry, the relative size of the proposed industry and its economic significance. This input will also be used to assess confidentiality issues and costs of change to data producers and data users, and to negotiate with Mexico and the United States.

NAICS Canada 2007 may be viewed at:
North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 2007

Please consider the following criteria when preparing your input to the revision of the North American Industry Classification System.

Criteria for creating new classes or updating current classes

The criteria for creating new classes or updating current classes are as follows. Proposed classes should:

  1. Meet the process-based conceptual framework agreed to by Canada, Mexico and the United States for grouping producing units. The principle underlying NAICS is that producing units that use similar production processes should be grouped together in the classification (i.e. the industry is based on transformation process, and not products.)
  2. Be consistent with classification principles of mutual exclusivity, exhaustiveness, and homogeneity of units within classes.
  3. Have empirical significance, that is, classes should produce gross revenues of $500 million, be collectable and linked to a funded program for data collection.
  4. Be relevant, that is, they must be of analytical interest, result in data useful to users and be based on appropriate statistical research and subject matter expertise.
  5. Be given special attention as far as the following industries are concerned and for which lower revenue requirements will be considered:
    • new and emerging industries;
    • services industries;
    • industries engaged in the production of advanced technologies.
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