Glossary
NAICS 42
NAICS 42 is north American Industry Classification System sector covering wholesale trade, used as the kind-of-business dimension in US distributor statistics. In Datadory's catalog of 1,744 datasets, Monthly Wholesale Trade Survey (MWTS) - Sales & Inventories (tag and NAICS Association - NAICS 42 Wholesale Trade Code Directory are working examples.
What is NAICS 42?
The North American Industry Classification System sector covering wholesale trade, used as the kind-of-business dimension in US distributor statistics.
Federal series break NAICS 42 down to subsector (3-digit) and industry (4/5-digit) level, and the sector holds roughly 70 codes in the NAICS 42 directory.
In this catalog it appears concretely: - Monthly Wholesale Trade Survey (MWTS) - Sales & Inventories (tag (granularity) — "by NAICS 42 kind of business (subsector 3-digit and industry 4/5-digit levels)". - NAICS Association - NAICS 42 Wholesale Trade Code Directory — "every NAICS 42 wholesale trade code". - U.S. Economic Census - Wholesale Trade — "related_datasets entry in the distributors slice".
Why does NAICS 42 matter when choosing a dataset?
Conventions decide whether two sources can be joined at all. Buy one side of an analysis that ignores this convention and every reconciliation step — calendar alignment, unit conversion, entity matching — lands on your team instead of the vendor's.
The failure mode is concrete: a source can carry the NAICS 42 label while differing from what you need on exactly the dimension that matters — by NAICS 42 kind of business (subsector 3-digit and industry 4/5-digit levels). Comparing two sources on that line usually settles the choice faster than any feature matrix.
You rarely have to take a vendor's word for it. 82.4% of the 1,744 datasets Datadory catalogs are free to access, and Monthly Wholesale Trade Survey (MWTS) - Sales & Inventories (tag lets you inspect the real artifact before any budget is committed.
How do you evaluate NAICS 42 in a data source?
Treat every claim of this attribute as testable:
- Read Monthly Wholesale Trade Survey (MWTS) - Sales & Inventories (tag's record on granularity — "by NAICS 42 kind of business (subsector 3-digit and industry 4/5-digit levels)" — then confirm the delivered artifact matches before you license anything. 2. Open NAICS Association - NAICS 42 Wholesale Trade Code Directory and confirm its record — "every NAICS 42 wholesale trade code" — against the files you actually receive. 3. Open **U.S.
Related terms
Adjacent concepts worth reading next: - merchant wholesalers - naics code directory
Frequently asked questions
What is an example of NAICS 42?
Monthly Wholesale Trade Survey (MWTS) - Sales & Inventories (tag is the clearest example in this catalog. Its record on granularity reads: "by NAICS 42 kind of business (subsector 3-digit and industry 4/5-digit levels)". Across all 1,744 datasets Datadory averages a quality score of 7.81 out of 10, so a named example can be weighed rather than trusted blindly.
Is data described as "NAICS 42" free to use?
Treat access and permission separately. 82.4% of the 1,744 datasets in this catalog are free to access, but 235 are freemium and 61 are paid outright, so confirm both the price and the license on the exact distribution before building on it.
How do I verify a source really provides NAICS 42?
Open Monthly Wholesale Trade Survey (MWTS) - Sales & Inventories (tag next to NAICS Association - NAICS 42 Wholesale Trade Code Directory and compare the promise with the download. Field definitions are verified for 1495 of 1,744 datasets (85.7%), which makes that check fast inside the catalog and manual outside it.
Datasets containing this field
Datasets containing NAICS 42
6 datasets carry naics 42 in the catalog. Open one, count the fields, judge for yourself.
Data.gov — Banking Datasets Catalog
DBnomics — The World's Economic Database
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