February 12, 2002 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Headquarters jobs for 1.8 million

Management of companies and enterprises is a new sector in the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The sector is composed of corporate and regional headquarters offices and holding companies and employs roughly 1.8 million workers.

[Chart data—TXT]

Under the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system, the headquarters of a multinational corporation with its primary interests in the auto industry, for example, would be placed in the automobile manufacturing industry. Under NAICS, this location is moved out of manufacturing and into the new management sector. Analysts now will be able to track developments such as what happens to headquarters employment over the business cycle and which States are gaining employment in this sector.

Although relatively small—it is third from the bottom in terms of the numbers of establishments in the 20 NAICS sectors and sixth from the bottom in terms of employment—the sector reports a high wage. Only the finance and insurance sector had a higher average weekly wage.

These data are preliminary private sector U.S. totals for the first quarter of 2001 from the Covered Employment and Wages program. Additional information is available from "A first look at employment and wages using NAICS," by David R.H. Hiles, Monthly Labor Review, December 2001.