Industry & Market Research Guide

Use NAPCS to find statistics about products and services across industries

Use North American Product Classification System (NAPCS) codes to gain insights about products and services that are available across industries (NAICS). With NAPCS, products are linked to the industries that produce them, and industries can be linked to the products they produce. 

About NAPCS codes

The North American Product Classification System (NAPCS) is a market- or demand-based classification system for products (goods and services) that is not industry-of-origin based but can be linked to the NAICS industry structure. The same NAPCS product or service can be sold across different NAICS industries or even different sectors. A product produced by multiple industries carries the same title, definition, and code in NAPCS, regardless of its industries of origin. NAPCS was first implemented in the 2017 Economic Census and last revised in the 2022 Economic Census. 

Code structure

All NAPCS codes in the product collection are 10 digits. There are two product collection levels - broad and detail: 

• Broad lines are higher level products collected across all sectors (these end in "0")
• Detail lines are more detailed products within broad lines and are intended for industry specific collection (these end in "1"–"9")

NAPCS code example: 

• 5000475000 = Retail sales of footwear and footwear accessories (broad line)
• 5000475015 = Retail sales of women's athletic footwear, including tennis shoes/sneakers (detail line)

Sources & learn more

NAPCS in the Economic Census

You can use NAPCS codes when searching the Economic Census via the U.S. Census Data platform by using the Advanced Search. 

NAPSC-based data are presented in two ways: 

• Industries by Product -  Choose a NAPCS product (broad line) and view its contributing NAICS industries. Use this to find out which industries make, sell, or provide a product.
• Products by Industry - Choose a NAICS industry and view its NAPCS products (broad and detail lines). Use this if you want to compare a business's products to the products of other businesses in the same industry. 

Search tips

Find Industry by Products:

1. Click Advanced Search
2. Click on Codes > click on Industry Codes (NAICS)  > select a NAICS code from the list
3. Click on Survey > click on Economic Census > click on Core Statistics > select Economic Census
4. Click on Codes  > click on NAPCS Collection > select All NAPCS Collection Codes
5. Click Search
6. Choose Table "All Sectors: Industry by Products for the U.S. and States"

Find Products by Industry:

1. Click Advanced Search
2. Click on Codes  > click on NAPCS Collection > select a code from the list (remember that If you want to look at all the industries that sell or provide a certain product you need to choose a broad line. Detail lines will not provide the same full breakout that you will see if you choose the broad line)
3. click on Survey > click on Economic Census > click on Core Statistics > select Economic Census
4. click on Codes > click on Industry Codes (NAICS)  > select All Available NAICS
5. Click Search
6. Choose Table "All Sectors: Products by Industry for the U.S" to see the detailed 6-digit NAICS codes for that product
7. Go back to results and choose Table "All Sectors: Industry by Products for the U.S. and States" to see the information broken out by  2, 3, 4, 5 and 6-digit NAICS

Search tips adapted from the following webinar: