NAICS Codes, Explained: What That 6-Digit Number Actually Means

A 6-digit code, read left to right

Every business that registers for a Texas sales-tax permit reports a NAICS code — the North

American Industry Classification System code the federal government uses to categorize

businesses. It looks arbitrary, but it's structured, and reading the first few digits tells you

most of what you need to know without looking anything up.

How the hierarchy works

• First 2 digits — broad sector (72 = Accommodation & Food Services, 44–45 = Retail Trade,

54 = Professional Services, 23 = Construction)

• First 3 digits — subsector (722 = Food Services & Drinking Places)
• First 4 digits — industry group (7225 = Restaurants & Other Eating Places)
• Full 6 digits — the specific national industry (722511 = Full-Service Restaurants,

722513 = Limited-Service Restaurants)

Codes worth knowing in this data

• 722511 / 722513 — restaurants, full- and limited-service. This is the code we filter to

for restaurant openings.

• 454110 — electronic shopping & mail-order houses. In practice, this is almost always a

home-based online reseller, not a storefront — we hide these by default across the site.

• 812199 — "all other personal care services," a catch-all that covers everything from spas

to specialty wellness studios.

• 541xxx — professional, scientific, and technical services (law, design, consulting,

engineering) — high filing volume, almost never a public-facing storefront.

• 236xxx / 237xxx — construction — general contractors and specialty trade contractors,

useful for spotting new builders active in the metro.

Why this matters for reading "new business" data

A raw count of "new business filings" is mostly noise without a NAICS filter — a spike in a ZIP

code is just as likely to be a wave of home-based resellers or consultants registering an LLC as

it is a wave of new storefronts. Filtering to the codes that actually require a physical,

public-facing location is what turns the Comptroller's raw feed into a useful signal.

See new businesses filtered by category →

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