Measuring informality: a statistical manual on the informal sector and informal employment

This manual is intended as a technical guide for national statistical offices and other producers of statistics on the informal sector and informal employment. It presents the current international standards on employment in the informal sector that were adopted by the 15th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) in 1993, as well as the guidelines on informal employment adopted by the 17th ICLS in 2003. It also provides practical guidance on implementing the standards, by presenting alternative measurement methodologies along with examples based on national experience,...  [+] Show more

This manual is intended as a technical guide for national statistical offices and other producers of statistics on the informal sector and informal employment. It presents the current international standards on employment in the informal sector that were adopted by the 15th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) in 1993, as well as the guidelines on informal employment adopted by the 17th ICLS in 2003. It also provides practical guidance on implementing the standards, by presenting alternative measurement methodologies along with examples based on national experience, and includes guidelines for the dissemination of statistics on the informal sector and informal employment.

The introductory chapter is the first of eight chapters. The second chapter describes in greater detail the concepts, definitions and sub-classifications. Chapter three considers the measurement objectives and data collection strategies that are needed for producing statistics on informal employment and production and on employment in the informal sector and provides an overview of the main alternative sources of data, namely, household surveys (particularly labour force surveys), enterprise surveys and mixed household and enterprise surveys. Chapter four describes the collection and processing of data for the production of statistics on informal employment and on the informal sector through household surveys. Chapters five and six focus on methods of collecting data on enterprises in the informal sector: chapter five on establishment surveys and censuses, and chapter six on mixed surveys of informal sector enterprises. The last two chapters focus on how to use the statistics obtained: chapter seven deals with tabulation, reporting and dissemination issues, while chapter eight describes the use of statistics for national accounts purposes.

Excerpts from publication.