Balvarez2's List: Industries

The Ency. of American Industries is a great starting point for industry research. Each industry profile provides an overview of that industry's structure, history, development, leaders, and more. Broken out by SIC code, in the print version Volume 1 covers Manufacturing Industries and volume 2 covers Service and Non-Manufacturing Industries.

While building this course, I stumbled across a free online version of the Encyclopedia of American Industries. It's fairly low-budget, but in a good way--no ads, no distractions. It's keyword searchable, or you can browse by industry heading. I have no idea how long this will stay available, but it's a good opportunity to check out the content of this title.

Vault.com is a fairly well-know business career resource--they publish a number of guides on various industries which are geared towards a job-seeking audience. Their online site points to a lot of fee-based material, but there are some useful industry profiles and ranked lists and other resources here if you look carefully.

While I wouldn't necessarily start my industry research here, the Economic Census is a vast source of industry information. So vast, in fact, that an entire guide called Industry Research Using the Economic Census has been written to help users weed through the overwhelming amount of data. The Economic Census is only done every five years, so there are a number of other reports that occur during the off years (although the data is not always posted immediately) including the Annual Survey of Manufactures and the Annual Retail Trade Survey.

More government data: Find data on production and shipments of selected manufactured products as reported by the Manufacturing, Mining and Construction Statistics division of the Census

The ITA used to publish something called the US Industry & Trade Outlook but, after years of waiting for them to shift from a discontinued print version to something online, I'm not holding my breath any more. But the ITA has additional industry coverage in their Data & Analysis section. With some digging, you can find some market size estimates and more.

Created by the Fuld & Company Library, this site provides "links to nearly 600 intelligence-related Internet sites, covering everything from macro-economic data to individual patent and stock quote information." (Note: You have to register now to receive a link to download the guide).

This bibliography from the Business Reference Services division of the Library of Congress points to a number of titles featured here as well as a few more and some online sites for industry information as well.