Why were the industry codes for Census 2000 changed from the SIC to the NAICS?
The North American Industry Classification System was developed as a joint effort by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, in order to have common industry definitions. This enables economists and others to compare the industrial statistics produced in each of the three different nations’ labor force. For more information on the NAICS, go to the website http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/naics.html. The Census Bureau always uses the most recent standard classification to create its own classification for each census. For this reason it has based the Census 2000 classification on the NAICS rather than on the SIC.
