This document summarizes a study on informal employment. It defines informal employment as employment that is not regulated by legislation and lacks social protections. It discusses different theories for conceptualizing informal employment. The study aimed to characterize informal employment, measure its prevalence in EU countries from 2005-2010, analyze its social distribution, and association with poor work-related health. It finds that informal employment definitions vary between high and low income countries. Household surveys are best to measure the health impacts of informal employment. The study found decreases in informal employment during economic downturns in most EU countries, but informal workers did not report worse health. It recommends standardizing informal employment definitions and improving how surveys measure it and health inequalities.

1. Mireia Julià, Marisol Ruiz, Gemma Tarafa and Joan Benach
Grup de Recerca en Desigualtats en Salut. Employment Conditions Network
(GREDS-EMCONET). Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Barcelona
Informal employment: concepts, measure
and prevalence
2nd of July 2015

2. Informal employment is one of the existing employment
conditions
Introduction
Source: (Comisión Para Reducir Las Desigualdades Sociales En Salud En España, 2012, p. 184)

3. Introduction
Informality is analyzed from different terms

4. Introduction
Informal employment: global phenomenon
(2011)

5. Introduction
Friedrich Schneider et al., “New Estimates for the Shadow Economies All Over the
World,” International Economic Journal, 2010
Shadow economies

6. • Vulnerable workers:
- Out of working legislation
- Out of taxation
- No social protection
- No benefits
Introduction

7. Introduction
• Informal employment (IE) is scarcely studied (mainly in high
income countries)
• Relationship between IE and health or health inequalities is
not much studied

8. Objectives
1. To characterize and analyse the situation of informal
employment relative to its definition, measurement and
classification
2. To measure IE in EU-27 countries in 2005 and 2010
3. To know social distribution of IE
4. To analyse the association between IE and Poor Work
Related Health (PWRH)

9. Objective 1: definition and measurement
• 3 Scoping Reviews:
• 1 for low and low-medium income countries (No South America)
(Unanue, 2011)
• 1 for high income countries (Julià, 2015)
• 1 for South America (Ruiz, 2015)
Objective 2-4: measure and relation with health
• Sample: 15-64 aged in the EU-27 from 2005 and 2010 EWCS
• Descriptive: Prevalence of IE and social distribution of PWRH
• Binomial logistic regression model
Methods

10. Search strategy methods
Additional retrieved articles
(n =42)
Potentially relevant retrieved articles
(n =1,432)
Duplicate articles
(n =329)
Titles reviewed
(n =1,103)
Abstracts reviewed
(n =117)
Fully read articles
(n =55)
Excluded (n = 986)
Not concerned with informal employment:
883
Not focused on low- income countries: 83
Not in English, Spanish, or French: 20
Excluded (n = 62)
Not concerned with informal
employment concepts or methods: 43
Not focused on low- income countries:
18
Not in English, Spanish, or French: 1
Scoping Review: Low
and Low-medium
income countries

11. Searching (n=2461):
Databases: n= 2427
Grey literature: n= 34
Excluded:
Duplicates: n=629
Screening I: titles and
abstracts
n= 1832
Screening II: full-text
articles
n=86:
Scholarly articles: n=52
Grey literature: n= 34
Excluded:
Did not meet our
selection criteria
n= 1746
Scoping:
n= 86
Scoping Review: High income countries
Search strategy methods

12. Scoping Review: South America
Search strategy methods
Tipo de fuente Referencia Encontrados a
Seleccionados Categoría 1 b
Categoría 2 Categoría 3
Scopus 724 60 10 20 30
SSRN 822 18 0 10 8
JSTOR 340 0 - - -
Google Scholar 292 c 4 1 1 2
Sub Total 1886 82 11 31 40
Documentos OIT 17 17 14 3 -
Documntos oficiales
países
33 33 21 12 -
Otros documentos 20 20 9 9 2
Sub Total 70 70 44 24 2
Total 1956 152 55 55 42
Base de datos
Literatura Gris
a
Se realizó la búsqueda contemplando 5 idiomas: castellano, catalán, italiano, inglés y portugués. En la mayoría de
las bases de datos no se filtró la búsqueda por años, sólo en Google Scholar. No obstante, posteriormente ese fue un
criterio para establecer la relevancia de los artículos.
b
Las categorías han sido definidas en base a 3 criterios: 1. el abordaje del tema, rescatando los artículos que tenían
un acercamiento a la salud; 2. la pertinencia de los artículos, de acuerdo a la focalización en el objeto de estudio; 3. a
su actualidad, los últimos 6 años fueron seleccionados como el período más relevante.
c
Sólo se utilizó "informal employment", la mayoría de la información relevante ya había sido encontrada y resultaba
difícil acotar aún más la búsqueda.

13. Results
• Informal Employment Theories:
Dualista / Estructuralista / Legalista / Voluntarista / Holística
• Informal Employment Conceptual Framework
Souce: Hussmanns, R. (2004).

14. Non-regulated placement in the labour market, which usually
involves an informal arrangement between employee and
employer (informal employment) or ‘self-employment’ (which
doesn’t involve a market exchange of labour force, but only of
products or services).
Results: definition
Social and labour
unprotected

15. Results: definition
STATUS OF EMPLOYMENT
Employee Family worker Self-employed Employers
CONTRACT
No
ISCO *
≠ 2
Nº
workers
< 5
Without
workers
INFORMAL EMPLOYMENT

16. Measurement
methods
Direct Methods
Indirect Methods
Tax-auditing based measures
Discrepancy between official and
actual labor force
Transaction approach
Currency demand approach
Electricity consumption approach
Discrepancy between national
expenditure and national income
Model Approach
Multiple Indicators, Multiple Causes
Model
National Surveys
Household Surveys
Enterprise and Establishment Surveys
Mixed Household Surveys
National Surveys
Household Surveys
Enterprise and Establishment Surveys
Mixed Household Surveys
Results: measurement methods

17. Prevalence of IE in EU-27 in 2005 and 2010
Source: own elaboration
Results

18. Results
Differences in
prevelences
between 2005 and
2010

19. 2005 2010
Occupational status
n (%) OR 95% CI n (%) OR 95% CI
Men Formals Employee 9902 (74,6) 1 13838 (77,9) 1
Self-employed 715 (5,4) 1,43 (1,15-1,78) 912 (5,1) 1,22 (0,99-1,52)
Employer 378 (2,9) 0,61 (0,46-0,82) 406 (2,3) 0,86 (0,63-1,19)
Informals Self-employed 930 (7,0) 0,99 (0,80-1,21) 1287 (7,2) 0,97 (0,81-1,17)
Employer 473 (3,6) 0,88 (0,69-1,14) 548 (3,1) 0,77 (0,59-1,01)
Employee 784 (5,9) 0,57 (0,45-0,71) 579 (3,3) 0,75 (0,58-0,98)
Family workers 85 (0,6) 1,01 (0,54-1,90) 187 (1,1) 1,16 (0,74-1,82)
Women Formals Employee 8475 (80,2) 1 12027 (82,5) 1
Self-employed 470 (4,4) 1,19 (0,89-1,59) 572 (3,9) 1,06 (0,80-1,38)
Employer 133 (1,3) 1,03 (0,64-1,64) 144 (1,0) 2,33 (1,42-3,82)
Informals Self-employed 511 (4,8) 0,83 (0,63-1,10) 711 (4,9) 0,66 (0,52-0,85)
Employer 188 (1,8) 1,08 (0,69-1,67) 266 (1,8) 0,48 (0,31-0,75)
Employee 698 (6,6) 0,97 (0,76-1,22) 632 (4,3) 0,59 (0,45-0,78)
Family workers 95 (0,9) 2,2 (1,18-4,09) 219 (1,5) 0,58 (0,38-0,89)
Source: own elaboration
* Adjusted by age, occupation, education, country ,working hours, income,
ambiental and ergonomic risks.
Association between occupational status and poor work-related health. Men and
women in 2005 and 2010.
Results

20. Conclusions (I)
• There is no single definition of IE, although there is a conceptual framework
that takes into account multiple ways.
• IE different definition in low and low-income countries and also than high
income. Comparison difficult.
• Direct methods, especially household surveys are the most appropriate to
measure the impact of IE on the health inequalities.
• Few countries measure IE through surveys and data are hard to come by
(mainly in low income)
• With labor force survey, we can not make a monitoring system of the health
inequalities: missing health data.

21. • During the economic downturn IE had decrease in most of EU countries
• Informal workers not worse PWRH
• Results (IE-PWRH) are contradictory with our initial hypothesis
Conclusions (II)
• Possible causes:
 PWRH is not the best indicator
 EWCS is not made to study IE
 How to measure IE

22. • Standardize a definition of IE for low- and lower-middle income countries and
another for high income countries
• Improved definition of IE (to be measured for Public Health)
• New instruments to measure IE or modify surveys to properly collect IE and
health inequalities
• Future research: include health indicators to surveys o create/use new
indicators (i.e: mental health).
Recomendations

23. mireia.julia@upf.edu
Thank you