The Global Workforce: A Statistical Picture
In 2002, the WIEGO network analyzed available national statistics
on the informal economy (broadly defined) for an ILO publication
called Women
and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture.
The available evidence shows that, in developing countries, informal
employment comprises one half to three-quarters of non-agricultural
employment in developing countries and, if informal employment in
agriculture is measured, a higher percentage still of total employment.
Self-employment comprises a greater share of informal employment
than wage employment. And informal employment comprises a greater
share of women’s employment than of men’s employment.
What follows is a summary of the main statistical findings of the
2002 ILO publication, including data on non-standard work in developed
countries:
Size of the Informal Economy -
If South Africa is excluded, the share of informal employment
in non-agricultural employment rises to 78 per cent in sub-Saharan
Africa; and if comparable data were available for other countries
in South Asia in addition to India, the regional average for Asia
would likely be much higher.
- Some countries include informal
employment in agriculture in their estimates.
This significantly increases the proportion of informal
employment: from 83 per cent of
non-agricultural employment to
93 per cent of total
employment in India; from 55 to 62 per cent in Mexico;
and from 28 to 34 per cent in South Africa.
- Three categories of non-standard
or atypical work – self-employment, part-time work, and
temporary work – comprise 30 per cent of overall employment
in 15 European countries and 25 per cent of total employment in
the United States. Although not all self-employed,
part-time workers, and temporary workers are informally employed,
the majority receive few (if any) employment-based benefits or
protection. In the United States, for instance, less than 20 per
cent of regular part-time workers have employer-sponsored health
insurance or pensions.
*In the ILO 2002 book, countries such as Syria in Western Asia
were included under Asia. In this summary, Western Asia has been
included under the Middle East and North Africa.
Composition of the Informal Economy –
As noted earlier, the informal economy is comprised of both self-employment
in informal enterprises (i.e., small and/or unregistered) and wage
employment in informal jobs (i.e., without secure contracts, worker
benefits or social protection).
Excluding South Africa, the share of self-employment in informal
non-agricultural employment increases to 81 per cent in sub-Saharan
Africa. The share of self-employment in total informal employment
would likely be higher if informality in agricultural was included.
- Self-employment represents nearly
one-third of total non-agricultural employment worldwide.
It is less important in developed countries (12 percent of total
non-agricultural employment) than in developing countries where
it comprises as much as 53 per cent of non-agricultural employment
in sub-Saharan Africa, 44 per cent in Latin America, 34 per cent
in Asia, and 28 per cent in the Middle East and North Africa.
- Informal wage employment is also
significant in the developing world: comprising 30 to 40 per cent
of informal employment (outside of agriculture).
Informal wage employment is comprised of employees of informal
enterprises as well as various types of informal wage workers
who work for formal enterprises, households, or no fixed employer.
These include casual day labourers, domestic workers, industrial
outworkers (notably homeworkers), undeclared workers, and part-time
or temporary workers without secure contracts, worker benefits,
or social protection.
- Non-standard wage employment,
much of which is informal, is significant in the developed world.
In 1998, part-time work represented 14 per cent of total employment
for the OECD countries as a whole and more than 20 per cent of
total employment in eight of these countries. In the countries
of the European Union, temporary work comprises 11 per cent of
total employment. Comparable data on other categories of non-standard
wage work that are even more likely to be informal in nature –
namely, contract work, industrial outwork, and casual day labour
- are not available.
- Home-based workers and street vendors
are two of the largest sub-groups of the informal workforce: with
home-based workers the more numerous but street vendors the more
visible of the two. Together they represent 10-25
per cent of the non-agricultural workforce in developing countries
and over 5 per cent of the total workforce in developed countries.
Women and Men in the Informal Economy –
- Informal employment is generally
a larger source of employment for women than for men in the developing
world. Other than in the Middle East and North
Africa where 42 per cent of women workers are in informal employment,
60 per cent or more of women workers in the developing world are
in informal employment (outside agriculture). Here are the comparative
figures for informal employment as share of non-agricultural employment
by sex and region: in sub-Saharan Africa, 84 per cent of women
workers compared to 63 per cent of men workers; in Latin America
58 per cent of women workers in comparison to 48 per cent of men
workers; and in Asia 73 per cent of women workers in comparison
to 70 per cent of men workers.
- Although women’s labour
force participation rates are lower than men’s, the limited
data available point to the importance of women in home-based
work and street vending in developing countries:
30-90 per cent of street vendors (except in societies that
restrict women’s mobility);
35-80 per cent of all home-based workers (including both self-employed
and homeworkers); and
80 per cent or more of homeworkers (industrial outworkers
who work at home).
- Although women’s labour force
participation rates are lower than men’s, women represent
the vast majority of part-time workers in many developed countries.
In 1998, women were 60 per cent or more of part-time
workers in all OECD countries reporting data. Women’s share
of part-time work for specific countries was as high as 98 per
cent in Sweden, 80 per cent in the United Kingdom, and 68 per
cent in both Japan and the United States.
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