What is WZ 2008?
WZ 2008 (Klassifikation der Wirtschaftszweige, 2008 edition) is the official scheme of the German Federal Statistical Office used to code a company’s economic activity in Germany. It is the German implementation of the European NACE classification.
What is NACE?
NACE (Nomenclature statistique des activités économiques dans la Communauté européenne) is the EU’s statistical classification of economic activities. WZ 2008 is based on NACE Rev. 2 and is identical down to the fourth level — keeping German and European industry data comparable.
Structure: from section to subclass
The classification is hierarchical:
- Section — one letter (A–U), 21 broad economic areas
- Division — two digits
- Group — three digits
- Class — four digits (matches NACE Rev. 2)
- Subclass — five digits, a national refinement found only in WZ 2008
| Section | Area |
|---|---|
| A | Agriculture, forestry and fishing |
| C | Manufacturing |
| F | Construction |
| G | Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles |
| J | Information and communication |
| K | Financial and insurance activities |
| M | Professional, scientific and technical activities |
How Implisense uses industry codes
Implisense assigns WZ codes to each of the roughly 2.5 million German companies it covers. These power industry targeting, segmentation, ideal-customer-profile (ICP) definition and market-size estimates. The codes are available via the API and as company data.
Closely related is the question of how large a company is — see Company size & the EU SME definition.