OECD work in this area is carried out under the auspices of the Statistical Working Party of the Committee for Industry and Business Environment (CIBE). It involves close co-operation with the Statistics Directorate (STD). It covers methodological work, e.g. the OECD Productivity Manual; database development; and analytical work that informs the policy discussion in CIBE and other OECD committees.

The methodological work provides guidelines on the measurement of industrial performance. In recent years, it has focused on the measurement of productivity growth, price measurement in areas of rapid change, such as information technology, and the classification of industries by their degree of knowledge intensity. This work benefits from close co-operation with methodological work in STD.

Several databases are available. The key one is the Structural Analysis (STAN) database, which provides output, input and trade data by economic activity, enabling detailed analysis of industrial performance. Other databases include the Structural Statistics for Industry and Services (SSIS) and Statistics by Enterprise Size Class (SEC) databases, which provide industrial survey data; the Bilateral Trade Database; and the OECD Input-Output Database.

The analytical work informs the policy debate. In recent years, much work has focused on the sources of economic growth, including studies on the contribution of ICT-using and ICT-producing sectors to growth, the role of services, and the contribution of ICT investment. This work is published in the STI Working Papers series; several studies have been published in OECD Economic Studies.