Should we disaggregate the major household appliances commodity?

[WesIngwersen]

See commodity diffs where CEDA has:
335221 Household cooking appliance manufacturing
335222 Household refrigerator and home freezer manufacturing
335224 Household laundry equipment manufacturing
335228 Other major household appliance manufacturing

whereas BEA and USEEIO just have
335220 Major home appliances

Resolved: Use a single sector for major home appliances to align with NAICS and BEA

[bl-young]

I was trying to look if there was any indication from BEA as to the justification for this consolidation. While I understand the benefit of more granularity, I wonder how much value there is in maintaining these, assuming BEA is likely to keep just a single sector into the 2022 benchmark.

I don't expect we have a lot of data sources to help us distinguish these sectors. And practically, it feels like many firms may have trouble even distinguishing themselves across these four. Don't most companies that make these appliances make them all anyway?

[sangwonsuhvm]

Apologies that I am on a train and can't look up the table. Aren't those listed as commodities in BEA make and use matrices?

[bl-young]

Ah I misremembered. It was actually a change in NAICS codes for 2017 (not a BEA reclassification). The former no longer exist in NAICS 2017. I'll note this change is maintained in NAICS 2022 as well.

I think it would be quite challenging to perform this disaggregation and so would propose that we do not.

[MoLi7]

Acknowledging that in the 2017 BEA benchmark Make and Use tables there is a single code (335220) for major household appliances. CEDA had previously retained four distinct codes for continuity and consistency in customer experience.

After review, we believe the cost of maintaining the four legacy codes now outweighs the benefits. Moving to a single code aligns with the latest BEA taxonomy, simplifies the modeling approach, and should have minimal user impact. Users with mappings to the four legacy codes will be automatically redirected to 335220.

This decision aligns with the Cornerstone technical team’s consensus. Accordingly, we will standardize on 335220 — Major household appliances.