Economic activities which are not conducted through legally incorporated bodies and are not reported to the tax and social security authorities. This is also referred to as the informal or unorganized sector. Such activities range from part-time domestic cleaning, gardening and child-minding to large-scale organized crime and drug-trafficking. While many small-scale activities in the unofficial economy are harmless, the unofficial sector frequently involves ignoring health and safety regulations, restrictions on child labour and minimum wage legislation, absence of proper insurance for employees, evasion of income and value-added tax and social security contributions, and abuse of the social security system by drawing benefits when actually working. It is naturally extremely difficult to measure the level of unofficial economic activity, which lowers the reliability of official statistics on the economy.

• smog
• Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act
• snake in the tunnel
• social benefit
• Social Chapter
• social charges
• social cost
• socialism
• social opportunity cost
• social overhead capital
• social safety net
• social security benefits
• social security contributions
• social services
• social welfare function
• society, co-operative
• soft budget constraint
• soft currency
• soft landing
• soft loan
• soil erosion
• sole proprietor
• sole trader
• Solow growth model
• Solow residual