Glossary
Informal sector	The informal sector is broadly characterised as consisting of units engaged in the production of goods or services with the primary objective of generating employment and incomes to the persons concerned. These units typically operate at a low level of organisation, with little or no division between labour and capital as factors of production and on a small scale. Labour relations – where they exist – are based mostly on casual employment, kinship or personal and social relations rather than contractual arrangements with formal guarantees. This broad definition is operationalised for statistical purposes and the informal sector defined as comprising those household unincorporated enterprises with market production that are: • informal own account enterprises (optionally, all, or those that are not registered under specific forms of national legislation); • enterprises of informal employers (optionally all those with less than a specified level of employment and/or not registered and/or employees not registered.
Non observed economy	The groups of activities most likely to be non-observed are those that are underground, illegal, informal sector, or undertaken by households for their own final use. Activities may also be missed because of deficiencies in the basic statistical data collection programme. These groups of activities are referred to (in the NOE Handbook) as the problem areas. Activities not included in the basic data because they are in one or more of these problem areas are collectively said to comprise the non-observed economy.
Underground production	consists of activities that are productive in an economic sense and quite legal (provided certain standards or regulations are complied with), but that are deliberately concealed from public authorities for the following kinds of reasons: - to avoid the payment of income, value added or other taxes; - to avoid payment of social security contributions; - to avoid having to meet certain legal standards such as minimum wags, maximum hours, safety or health standards, etc.; - to avoid complying with certain administrative procedures, such as completing statistical questionnaires or other administrative forms (SNA dell’ONU)