New ILO report: Women and men in the informal economy: A statistical picture—What do data reveal about Central and Eastern Europe?

Women and men in the informal economy: A statistical picture  (Third edition) provides comparable estimates on the size of the informal economy and a statistical profile of informality using criteria from more than 100 countries, including Central and Eastern Europe.

Over 100 million workers – 25.1 per cent of all 76 Mio workers in Europe and Central Asia – make their living in the informal economy, the ILO said in a report, stressing that a transition to the formal economy is a condition to realize decent work for all. 

Focusing on Central and Eastern European countries, nearly 19 million workers are directly concerned by informality, about 25.7 per cent including agriculture and 18.4 per cent when excluding agriculture. Those proportions are slightly higher than the ones observed for developed countries as a whole (18.1 per cent) but far lower than the world average of 62.1 per cent. 

In Central and Eastern Europe, informal employment is a greater source of employment for men (28.1 per cent) than for women (23.0 per cent). Out of the 19 million workers in informal employment in the region, just over 7,7 million are women. Still, when in informal employment women tend to be more often found in the most vulnerable situations. 

Entrepreneurs — employers with employees but primarily own-account workers — are more exposed to informality than employees. In the region; while 10.1 per cent of all employees are informally employed, more than half of all entrepreneurs hold informal enterprises. The majority (over 60 per cent) of employees employed informally are actually employed in formal enterprises reflecting the significant numbers of employees who are either not protected or insufficiently protected within formal sector enterprises. A significant proportion of them are employed on a temporary basis and/or work part-time or very short hours.

As high as 40 per cent of the youth are informally employed compared to one fourth of the 25 and over. The level of education is another key factor affecting the level of informality in the region. The share of informal employment decreases from more than half among workers with primary education at best to 12 per cent among those with tertiary level.

The full version of the report can be found here