Indicator 8.3.1 - Proportion of informal employment in total employment, by sector and sex - Indicators For The Sustainable Development Goals

This table provides information on metadata for SDG indicators as defined by the UN Statistical Commission. Complete global metadata is provided by the UN Statistics Division.

Indicator	Indicator 8.3.1: Proportion of informal employment in total employment, by sector and sex
Target	Target 8.3: Promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, including through access to financial services
Organisation	International Labour Organization (ILO)
Definition and concepts	Definition: This indicator presents the share of employment which is classified as informal employment in the total economy, and separately in agriculture and in non-agriculture. Concepts: Employment comprises all persons of working age who, during a short reference period (one week), were engaged in any activity to produce goods or provide services for pay or profit. The difference between the two series for a given country is the operational criteria used to define employment, with one series based on the statistical standards from the 13^th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) and the other series based on 19^th ICLS standards. In the 19^th ICLS series, employment is defined more narrowly as work done for pay or profit, while activities not done mainly in exchange for remuneration (i.e., own-use production work, volunteer work and unpaid trainee work) are recognized as other forms of work. Informal employment comprises persons who in their main or secondary jobs were in one of the following categories: - Own-account workers, employers and members of producers’ cooperatives employed in their own informal sector enterprises (the characteristics of the enterprise determine the informal nature of their jobs) - Own-account workers engaged in the production of goods exclusively for own final use by their household (e.g., subsistence farming), if covered in employment (i.e. 13^th ICLS series) - Contributing family workers if they work in formal or informal sector enterprises (they usually do not have explicit, written contracts of employment, and are not subject to labour legislation, social security regulations, collective agreements, etc., which determines the informal nature of their jobs) - Employees holding informal jobs, whether employed by formal sector enterprises, informal sector enterprises, or as paid domestic workers by households (employees are considered to have informal jobs if their employment relationship is, in law or in practice, not subject to national labour legislation, income taxation, social protection or entitlement to certain employment benefits) To classify persons into formal or informal employment for this indicator, only the characteristics of the main job are considered, as the required information to assess (in)formality of the second job is usually unavailable. An enterprise belongs to the informal sector if it fulfils the three following conditions: - It is an unincorporated enterprise (it is not constituted as a legal entity separate from its owners, and it is owned and controlled by one or more members of one or more households, and it is not a quasi-corporation: it does not have a complete set of accounts, including balance sheets) - It is a market enterprise (it sells at least some of the goods or services it produces); - The enterprise is not registered or the employees of the enterprise are not registered
Unit of measure	Percent (%)
Data sources	The preferred source of data for this indicator is a labour force survey, with sufficient questions to determine the informal nature of jobs and whether the establishment where the person works in belongs to the formal or the informal sector.
Data providers	National Statistical Offices
Comment and limitations	The considerable heterogeneity of definitions and operational criteria used by countries to measure informal employment greatly hinders the international comparability of statistics on informality. To counter this challenge, for the purpose of SDG global reporting and monitoring, the series is solely based on harmonized data produced by the ILO using the same operational process for all countries. Although some differences in criteria and definitions remain across countries, the process is designed to produce data that are as internationally comparable as possible given the underlying data sources.
Method of computation	$P r o p o r t i o n o f i n f o r m a l e m p l o y m e n t i n t o t a l e m p l o y m e n t = \frac{I n f o r m a l e m p l o y m e n t }{T o t a l e m p l o y m e n t} \times 100$ $P r o p o r t i o n o f i n f o r m a l e m p l o y m e n t i n a g r i c u l t u r e = \frac{I n f o r m a l e m p l o y m e n t i n a g r i c u l t u r a l a c t i v i t i e s}{T o t a l e m p l o y m e n t i n a g r i c u l t u r e} \times 100$ $P r o p o r t i o n o f i n f o r m a l e m p l o y m e n t i n n o n a g r i c u l t u r a l e m p l o y m e n t = \frac{I n f o r m a l e m p l o y m e n t i n n o n a g r i c u l t u r a l a c t i v i t i e s}{T o t a l e m p l o y m e n t i n n o n a g r i c u l t u r a l a c t i v i t i e s} \times 100$
Metadata update	2024-08-02
International organisations(s) responsible for global monitoring	International Labour Organization (ILO)
Related indicators	1.1.1, 1.3.1, 8.5.2
UN designated tier	2

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Indicator 8.3.1 Proportion of informal employment in total employment, by sector and sex