Defining and measuring informal employment in South Africa: A review of recent approaches

Derek Yu

No 09/2010, Working Papers from Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper reviews the Stats SA methodologies to measure informal employment before and after the introduction of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS), as well as other recently proposed approaches (e.g., Devey, Skinner and Valodia, Heintz and Posel, etc.), so as to investigate the congruence, if any, between the various measures of the rate of informality. Furthermore, econometric techniques are used to investigate commonalities and differences in the way in which the different measures of informality are associated with demographic and employment characteristics. The results suggest that informal employment is much bigger if the post-2007 Stats SA methodology, which considers employment as informal regardless of whether the activities take place in the informal sector or not, is adopted.

Keywords: South Africa; Household survey; Labour market trends; Informal employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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