The 2022 Economic Census will incorporate many changes that mirror the ever-changing U.S. economy, communities, and data user needs. Below is a summary of the key changes and links to more information.

For a list of the planned data products and release schedule for the 2022 Economic Census, see the high-level release schedule at: 2022 Economic Census Release Schedule.

To capture changes to the economy and provide a better experience for our respondents, there have been changes to how the 2022 Economic Census is collected. These include:

• A smarter, agile instrument that utilizes machine learning to assist with industry (NAICS) and product (NAPCS) classification and provides respondents with the appropriate questions for their business.
• Electronic communications such as email reminders will be utilized and customized for respondents’ needs.
• Questions have been updated/added to better reflect the changing economy, including topics such as business technologies and telemedicine when relevant. Obsolete questions have been removed.
• Industry coverage expanded to include support activities for crop production and animal production not included in the Census of Agriculture.
• For all sectors, questions have been added on business technologies that ask about the use and acquisition of touchscreens & kiosks, additive manufacturing (3D printing), use of robotics, and Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID).
• Businesses in all sectors will also be asked if they sold or purchased services to or from clients outside the U.S. (exported/imported services).
• Healthcare sector businesses will be asked if they received revenues from telemedicine services in 2022.
• Cannabis has been added as a primary kind of business to industries in Retail Trade and Wholesale Trade. 
• Cannabis, cryptocurrency, electric vehicles, and remanufacturing have been added as product lines for 2022.

The data released from the 2022 Economic Census will include a few structural and content changes. These include:

• An accelerated release schedule allowing statistics to be available sooner than ever before. See 2022 Economic Census Release Schedule.
• The “Geographic Area Statistics” will now be a single release – every sector and geography will be available on the same day. In previous years it was released on a flow basis by sector and state.
• The order of two releases was changed to better fit the needs of data users. The release of the “Comparative and Bridge Statistics” datasets have been moved up to immediately follow the “Geographic Area Statistics,” and “Establishment and Firm Size Statistics” will be released before the “Product Statistics.”
• There will be new statistics on: 

- Selected Support Activities for Agriculture and Forestry (NAICS 115)

- Cooperatives

• NAICS "Sector 00"

To better enhance the data users’ experience for EC22, the NAICS "Sector 00" page was created to minimize the repetition of multi-sector tables appearing on individual NAICS Sector webpages. These pages provide information on data tables and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) files that cover multiple industries in the same table/dataset. Within each EC22 NAICS Sector page, you will find a link to this new "Sector 00” page to better navigate the EC data tables pages. 

Note: NAICS "Sector 00" is not an official NAICS Sector. For the Economic Census of Island Areas (IA) and Other programs outside of the economic census, sector 00 may denote a total for all sectors. 

To further explain, the economic census uses a table naming convention beginning with PPYYSS where PP= program, YY= year, and SS= 2-digit NAICS sector. For example, table EC2242BASIC is the basic statistics table for the 2022 Economic Census for sector 42 Wholesale Trade only. Table EC2200BASIC is the basic statistics table for the 2022 Economic Census that shows data for all the sectors appearing together in one table.  

For reference, see: Economic Census by Industry and NAICS Sector 00- Multi-Sector Statistics.

• North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)

The economic census will be the first Census program to publish data on the 2022 North American Industry Classification System. The Reference Files tab on this page includes concordance files for NAICS differences between years. Changes for 2022 include:

-  One-to-one recodes – industries with no content change but with a code change

-  Many-to-one combinations – 2017 NAICS codes that were combined to form a new 2022 code

-  Many-to-many combinations – two or more 2022 codes that were created from parts of two or more 2017 codes

The economic census will now include two agriculture industry groups that are not included in the Census of Agriculture:

-  1151 – Support Activities for Crop Production

-  1152 – Support Activities for Animal Production

• North American Product Classification System (NAPCS)-Based Product Lines

The economic census includes a cross-sector presentation of NAPCS-based product lines, which are detailed breakouts of products made and sold and services provided. 

Concordances between 2017 product codes and 2022 NAPCS-based product codes are available at:         

-  2022 NAPCS-Based Collection Code to 2017 Product Code

-  2017 Product Code to 2022 NAPCS-Based Collection Code

Additional information on NAPCS is available at: https://www.census.gov/naics/napcs/