What does Section G cover in ISIC Rev. 5?

Section G in ISIC Rev. 5, published by the UN Statistics Division, covers wholesale and retail trade: the sale of goods without transforming them. Wholesale sells mainly to businesses, institutions and other traders, while retail sells mainly to the general public for personal or household use. The section covers sale through shops, stalls, markets, mail order and online channels, and it also covers the work of agents and brokers who arrange sales without taking ownership of the goods. It does not cover manufacturing, which changes goods, or services that do not involve selling goods.

What holds wholesale, retail, and arranging together?

Section G in ISIC Rev. 5, published by the UN Statistics Division, holds together three kinds of selling work that share one condition: goods are sold without being transformed. Wholesale trade except motor vehicles, retail trade except motor vehicles, trade in motor vehicles and motorcycles where described in Rev. 5, sale through specialised and non specialised stores, and agency and brokerage that arranges trade without owning goods all sit inside that shared condition. The goods may pass through many hands, but no hand in Section G changes the good itself. That unchanged good is what separates Section G from manufacturing, which changes goods, and from services that do not involve selling goods at all.

Within that shared condition, buyer and purpose divide the field. Wholesale sells mainly to businesses, institutions, and other traders. Retail sells mainly to the general public for personal or household use. Agents and brokers arrange sales without taking ownership of the goods. Those three sentences, taken together, give a reader the map of the section before any narrower grouping is considered. A business that buys and resells, a business that sells to households, and a business that arranges without owning are all in Section G, yet they occupy different places inside it, because what they do with the goods differs.

Which channels does Section G reach?

The section covers sale through shops, stalls, markets, mail order, and online channels. That channel list matters because it prevents a common misreading: trade does not stop being trade when it leaves a shop. A market pitch, a mailed catalogue order, and a website order can all be Section G sales when the underlying work is selling goods without transformation to the relevant buyer. The channel describes how buyer and seller meet. It does not, on its own, move the sale out of Section G, although store type and goods family still shape the narrower description inside the section.

Channels also explain why Section G looks so varied on the ground. A wholesaler’s warehouse, a high street shop, a market stall, and a home delivery parcel look nothing alike, yet each can be part of the same broad section when the work is selling untransformed goods. Such different scenes can share a section letter while differing sharply at division, group, and class level.

What sits outside Section G even when a shop is involved?

Selling a meal in a restaurant is not retail trade in this sense, because the meal is prepared and served as a food service. Repairing a good, renting it out, and manufacturing it are also described elsewhere, even though a shop may offer those services alongside sales. A shop that sells goods and also repairs them therefore does two kinds of work that belong in different descriptive places, and a statistical record needs to recognise that split rather than folding the repair into the sale or the sale into the repair. The same logic applies to a trader that transforms a good before selling it: transformation moves the work toward manufacturing description, even if the finished good is then sold from the same premises.

Those outside cases are the reason neighbouring descriptions exist. Selling an unchanged good, preparing a meal, repairing a good, renting a good, and making a good are different kinds of work, so they are described in different places, even when one business performs several of them under one roof.

How does the stationery example separate wholesale from retail?

A wholesaler that buys stationery in bulk and sells it to offices illustrates wholesale trade. A high street shop that sells single notebooks to shoppers illustrates retail trade, and the difference is the buyer and the purpose of the sale, not the notebook itself. Follow a single notebook through both scenes. In the wholesaler’s warehouse it is part of a bulk supply to offices, bought to be used in office work or resold onward. In the high street shop it is a single item bought by a shopper for personal or household use. The notebook, its paper, and its cover never change. The buyer changes, the purpose changes, and the Section G description changes from wholesale to retail as a result. That stability of the good beside the change of buyer is the clearest illustration of what Section G groups by.

On section g, the code statements here follow the UN Statistics Division classification detail and the ISIC Rev. 5 publication in the frontmatter.

Use this guide only as an orientation to what a statistical section covers. It does not determine any reader’s code, principal activity, or registration, and you should confirm those with the national statistical institute or business register that holds the record.