Glossary:Economic activity
An economic activity takes place when resources such as capital goods, labour, manufacturing techniques or intermediary products are combined to produce specific goods or services. Thus, an economic activity is characterised by an input of resources, a production process and an output of products (goods or services).
An activity as defined here may consist of one simple process (for example weaving), but may also cover a whole range of sub-processes, each mentioned in different categories of the classification (for example, the manufacturing of a car consists of specific activities such as casting, forging, welding, assembling or painting). If the production process is organised as an integrated series of elementary activities within the same statistical unit, the whole combination is regarded as one activity.
Within the European Union, the classification used of economic activities is the Statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community, abbreviated as NACE.