Categorizing business

The challenge of formally categorizing businesses has been addressed, at least in North America, by the compilation of an extraordinary data set that includes the records of almost all business establishments in the U.S. (more than 20 million). This is the result of a collaboration between the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and is called the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). An establishment is just any single physical location where business is conducted, even if it is a franchise or part of a national chain. Establishments are often viewed as the fundamental units of economic analysis because innovation, wealth generation, entrepreneurship, and job creation all manifest themselves through the formation and growth of such workplaces. The NAICS classification scheme employs a six-digit code at the most detailed industry level. The first two digits designate the largest business sector, the third digit designates the subsector, and so on, thereby capturing economic life at a fine-grained level.