Informal Employment Among Youth: Evidence from 20 School-to-Work Transition Surveys

This report explores a recently created data set on youth employment with a specific focusing on the topic of informal employment. Recent evidence shows that informal labour markets are growing and occupying an increasingly large share of gross domestic product in many countries. This report proposes a detailed description of the labour market experience of today’s youth, illustrated by statistics drawn from recent survey data from 20 countries. This report provides empirical evidence to confirm that informal employment, a category considered as “non standard” in traditional literature, is in fact “standard” among young workers in developing economies. If development implies an increase of formal employment options for young labour market entrants, we can safely say we are not there yet in the bulk of the 20 countries examined. Based on the school-to-work transitions surveys run in 2012-2013, the report finds that three-quarters of young workers aged 15-29 (at the aggregate level) are currently engaged in informal employment.