LinkedIn classifies every company into an industry from its own taxonomy, Industry Codes V2, and into one company size range by number of employees. LinkedIn's Industry Codes V2 reference lists 434 active industries grouped under 20 top-level sectors, from Accommodation Services to Wholesale, and the company size codes run from self-employed to 10,001+ employees. Both are chosen by the company itself on its LinkedIn Page, which is why they work as search filters and also why they sometimes mislead.
What are LinkedIn industries?
LinkedIn industries are the categories of LinkedIn's industry taxonomy, a fixed list that classifies companies and members by their main activity. Each industry has a numeric ID, a label, a hierarchy path and a description, as published in the Industry Codes V2 reference on Microsoft Learn, LinkedIn's developer documentation.
The taxonomy is a tree. A top-level sector such as Technology, Information and Media contains narrower industries, and some of those contain narrower ones again: Software Development (ID 4) sits under Technology, Information and Internet, which sits under Technology, Information and Media.
LinkedIn says it updated its industry taxonomy to align with the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) standards, according to LinkedIn Help ("LinkedIn industry options for profiles and pages", checked on 11 November 2026). The industry IDs are LinkedIn's own, though: the Industry Codes V2 page notes that they are different from the IDs in the NAICS codes.
The full LinkedIn industry list: 20 top-level sectors
The LinkedIn industry list has 20 top-level sectors, and every one of the 434 active industries in Industry Codes V2 belongs to one of them. The table below lists each top-level sector with its industry ID and some of the industries it contains, using the labels from the Industry Codes V2 reference on Microsoft Learn (checked on 11 November 2026).
| Industry ID | Top-level sector | Examples of industries inside it |
|---|---|---|
| 2190 | Accommodation Services | Hospitality; Food and Beverage Services |
| 1912 | Administrative and Support Services | Staffing and Recruiting; Facilities Services; Telephone Call Centers |
| 48 | Construction | Building Construction; Civil Engineering; Specialty Trade Contractors |
| 91 | Consumer Services | Non-profit Organizations; Household Services; Repair and Maintenance |
| 1999 | Education | Higher Education; E-Learning Providers; Professional Training and Coaching |
| 28 | Entertainment Providers | Musicians; Recreational Facilities; Museums, Historical Sites, and Zoos |
| 201 | Farming, Ranching, Forestry | Farming; Forestry and Logging |
| 43 | Financial Services | Capital Markets; Credit Intermediation; Insurance |
| 75 | Government Administration | Administration of Justice; Public Policy Offices |
| 1905 | Holding Companies | No narrower industries |
| 14 | Hospitals and Health Care | Hospitals; Medical Practices |
| 25 | Manufacturing | Food and Beverage Manufacturing; Machinery Manufacturing; Chemical Manufacturing |
| 332 | Oil, Gas, and Mining | Oil and Gas; Mining |
| 1810 | Professional Services | IT Services and IT Consulting; Business Consulting and Services; Legal Services; Accounting |
| 1757 | Real Estate and Equipment Rental Services | Real Estate; Equipment Rental Services |
| 27 | Retail | Online and Mail Order Retail; Retail Apparel and Fashion; Food and Beverage Retail |
| 1594 | Technology, Information and Media | Software Development; Telecommunications; Information Services |
| 116 | Transportation, Logistics, Supply Chain and Storage | Freight and Package Transportation; Truck Transportation; Warehousing and Storage |
| 59 | Utilities | Electric Power Generation; Natural Gas Distribution |
| 133 | Wholesale | Wholesale Import and Export; Wholesale Food and Beverage; Wholesale Machinery |
The complete list, with all 434 active industries and their descriptions, is in the Industry Codes V2 reference, which also keeps a separate table of inactive industries. LinkedIn Help warns that the industry options may change over time, so check the reference before building a classification that depends on an exact label.
How the LinkedIn industry hierarchy works in a search
The LinkedIn industry hierarchy decides how wide a filter is: choosing a top-level sector covers everything beneath it, while choosing a narrow industry covers only that branch. LinkedIn Help for Recruiter explains that industries are organised in a hierarchy and that search results vary with the hierarchy levels selected.
According to that article ("Filter candidates by industry in Recruiter and Talent Insights", checked on 11 November 2026), selecting only a level 1 label returns everyone mapped to that level and to the related level 2 and below, while selecting only a level 3 label returns those mapped to level 3 or below. For prospecting, that means two practical rules:
- A top-level sector is a wide net. Manufacturing alone brings in food, machinery, chemicals and every other manufacturing branch.
- A narrow industry is a precise net. Software Development leaves out IT Services and IT Consulting, even though a buyer might treat both as "tech companies".
LinkedIn company size ranges
LinkedIn company size ranges are fixed employee brackets that a company picks for its LinkedIn Page. LinkedIn's Company Size Codes reference on Microsoft Learn (last updated on 8 May 2023, checked on 11 November 2026) lists nine codes, from A to I.
| Size code | Company size range |
|---|---|
| A | Self-employed |
| B | 1-10 employees |
| C | 11-50 employees |
| D | 51-200 employees |
| E | 201-500 employees |
| F | 501-1000 employees |
| G | 1001-5000 employees |
| H | 5001-10,000 employees |
| I | 10,001+ employees |
The LinkedIn size ranges are fixed and do not overlap, so a target such as "100 to 300 employees" has to be covered with two ranges (51-200 and 201-500) and then trimmed by hand or by another criterion.
LinkedIn industry, company size and employee count compared
LinkedIn shows three different company attributes that are easy to mix up: the industry, the company size range and the employee count. The first two are declared by the company; the third is computed from member profiles.
| Attribute | Who sets it | What it is based on | Where it shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Industry | The Page super admin | One option from the industry list | Top section and About tab of the Page |
| Company size | The Page super admin | One of the nine size codes | About tab of the Page |
| Employee count | Members who link their profile to the Page | Top section of the Page |
LinkedIn Help explains why the numbers can disagree: actual employee counts may differ from what LinkedIn computes because of the company's industry, how often the company updates its self-reported numbers and differences between what a company counts as an employee and how an employee describes themselves on LinkedIn ("Premium insights on LinkedIn Pages", checked on 11 November 2026). A 300-person manufacturer whose plant workers do not use LinkedIn can show a small employee count next to a 201-500 size range.
How LinkedIn decides which industry a company is in
A company's LinkedIn industry is whatever the company chose on its own LinkedIn Page. A super admin adds it from the admin view by clicking Edit page and then Details, according to LinkedIn Help ("LinkedIn industry options for profiles and pages", checked on 11 November 2026).
LinkedIn's instruction to the person filling it in is short: "Choose the industry that best matches your company or the type of work that you do." The industry on a Page is therefore the company's own description of itself, which does not always match what it sells or who it sells to.
Why a company's LinkedIn industry can be misleading
A company's LinkedIn industry can mislead for three reasons, and each one has a fix:
- The company sells across sectors. A software firm that only serves logistics may pick Software Development, not Transportation, Logistics, Supply Chain and Storage. Fix: add keywords such as "logistics" or "warehouse" to the search instead of relying on the industry alone.
- The label was chosen years ago. A Page created long ago may still carry an industry that no longer matches the business. Fix: read the company's description or website before writing to it.
- Two industries fit equally well. A staffing agency for nurses could sit under Staffing and Recruiting or under Hospitals and Health Care. Fix: include both industries in the filter.
LinkedIn's own documentation gives the same advice: the Industry Codes V2 reference suggests using keywords to support the search when you cannot narrow down to the industry you want.
How to use LinkedIn industries and company sizes in a company search
LinkedIn industries and company sizes are most useful as two of the four filters of a company search, next to location and keywords. Translate your ideal customer profile into the industries that describe it (narrow ones when the buyer is specific, a top-level sector when it is broad), pick the size ranges that cover your target headcount and add keywords for the niche the taxonomy does not capture.
If you have not written that profile yet, start with the first stage of the prospecting process. The full walk-through, from profile to filters to removing duplicates, is in our guide to building a B2B company database. An example of a list built this way is the list of SaaS companies in Spain, filtered by industry, size and location.
How HappySales uses LinkedIn industries and company sizes
HappySales searches companies with LinkedIn's own taxonomy, because the HappySales company search runs on LinkedIn's company search; the sales rep asks for it in plain language inside Claude or ChatGPT, with HappySales connected through MCP, or works from the HappySales web app. The industry filter in HappySales accepts as many as 20 of LinkedIn's 434 industries, sub-industries included, next to single keywords, a maximum of 20 locations and the LinkedIn size ranges from 1-10 to 10001+ employees.
Choosing a top-level sector in HappySales therefore brings in the narrower industries beneath it, the same way the hierarchy works on LinkedIn. A request in Claude can read: "find companies in Truck Transportation and Warehousing and Storage with 51-200 or 201-500 employees in Rotterdam and Antwerp with the keyword cold chain".
LinkedIn's search stops at 1,000 companies, and that is also the most a single HappySales company search brings back. A bigger market therefore goes into several searches, cut by location or by size range: one for 51-200 employees and a second one for 201-500.
When the declared industry is not enough, HappySales lets each team create its own fields, called AI variables. A field such as "does this company sell to retail?" is added as a column to the list, and the user's own AI assistant (Claude or ChatGPT) fills it in for each company from the company's data; HappySales stores the answer, or "no information" when there is none. That is how a sales team corrects an industry label that does not reflect what a company really does. HappySales does not run a model of its own, it is not a CRM and it does not score leads: the person running the search decides which companies qualify.