How many digits is a SIC code?

Four. Shorter forms are levels of the same hierarchy rather than separate codes: two digits is the major group and three is the industry group. A five-digit code labelled SIC is either an extended commercial variant or the separate United Kingdom classification, which is also called SIC and is not the American system.

Who assigns a company its SIC code?

It depends on the context. A company selects its own when filing with the SEC, statistical agencies assigned them for surveys while the system was in federal use, and commercial data vendors infer them from business descriptions. The same company can therefore carry different codes in different datasets.

Can a company have more than one SIC code?

One primary code, and often several secondary ones in commercial datasets to cover additional lines of business. Filtering on primary codes only will miss diversified companies whose secondary activity is the one you sell to.

Is there a SIC code for a data centre or a SaaS company?

Not a specific one. Both fall into the 737 computer services group, usually 7374 for hosting and data processing and 7372 for packaged software, because neither business existed in its current form when the system was last revised. If the segment you want is defined by a modern category, build it on NAICS and use SIC only to widen the net.

What Is a SIC Code?

TL;DR

A SIC code, or Standard Industrial Classification code, is a four-digit number identifying the primary line of business of a company. The system was established in the United States in 1937 and last revised in 1987, and NAICS replaced it for federal statistics in 1997, though the SEC still uses it.

How is a SIC code structured?

Four digits, narrowing left to right. The first two identify the major group, the third narrows that to an industry group, and the fourth names the specific industry. Above the digits sit lettered divisions covering broad areas such as manufacturing, retail trade and services.

Code 7372, Prepackaged Software, shows the pattern: 73 is Business Services, 737 is Computer Programming and Data Processing, and the full 7372 is Prepackaged Software. Because there are only four digits, the finest level available is broader than the equivalent NAICS category, which matters most in service industries that grew after 1987.

Is the SIC system still used?

For federal statistics, no. NAICS was adopted in 1997, and the Census Bureau last used SIC for the 1992 Economic Census. The classification has not been revised since 1987, so whole categories of modern business have no accurate code.

It survives anyway, in two places. The SEC assigns SIC codes to company filings, so any research that starts from public filings starts from SIC. And commercial data vendors keep carrying it because long-running CRM records and saved list segments were keyed to SIC and would break if it were dropped, which is why JaxSuite AI offers SIC code as a company filter in Purchase Data alongside industry.

How do you find the SIC code for a sector?

Start at the division and walk down the digits. Retail trade occupies major groups 52 through 59, so every retailer sits somewhere in that block: 5411 is grocery stores, 5651 is family clothing stores, and 5961 is catalogue and mail-order houses, which is where a great deal of what is now online retail was originally filed.

Anything that did not exist in 1987 lands imprecisely. A data centre has no code of its own and is filed under 7374, data processing and preparation, or 7379, computer related services not elsewhere classified, depending on who did the filing. The same business is 518210 in NAICS, which has had a category for it since 2002. Where the sector is newer than the classification, filter on NAICS and treat any SIC value as a coarse fallback.

Is a SIC code the same as an ISIC code?

No, and the names invite the confusion. ISIC, the International Standard Industrial Classification, is the United Nations system that national schemes are built to map back to. SIC is the American scheme, four digits, frozen since 1987. ISIC organises its four digits into sections, divisions, groups and classes, and is revised on a UN timetable rather than a US one.

Two neighbours complete the picture. The United Kingdom publishes its own SIC, five digits, derived from the European NACE classification, and NACE is itself the European implementation of ISIC. So a column labelled only SIC is ambiguous until you know which country produced the data, and a five-digit value in it is a reliable sign that the system is not the American one.

Should you filter a list by SIC or NAICS?

By whichever code the records actually carry, and check which that is before building the segment. Many providers hold both plus a crosswalk between them, but a crosswalk is not one to one: a single SIC code can map to several NAICS codes and the reverse, so a translated filter is an approximation.

Where both are available, NAICS is the better choice for anything created in the last few decades, particularly software, digital services and healthcare specialties. SIC is the better choice when your existing segments, or the filings you are working from, are already expressed in it.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Four. Shorter forms are levels of the same hierarchy rather than separate codes: two digits is the major group and three is the industry group. A five-digit code labelled SIC is either an extended commercial variant or the separate United Kingdom classification, which is also called SIC and is not the American system.