Employmentweb_low

EmploymEnt, work, and hEalth inEqualitiEs - A globAl peRSpeCTIve
informal economy. Although it varies from country to country, a sizeable
proportion of economic activity takes place in an informal economy. what makes
these activities informal is that they are not reported to the government
authorities that measure and regulate the formal economy. exchange in the
informal economy is either for cash or barter, since these do not create records
that can be tracked by authorities. some activity in the informal economy would
still be illegal even if the income or the transactions were reported. work in the
informal economy poses considerable health risks because the working
conditions are unregulated and workers do not enjoy benefits. the informal
economy undermines social welfare systems because production in the informal
economy is untaxed. synonyms for the informal economy include underground,
hidden or irregular economy (losby et al., 2002).
in: Hadden, w. c., muntaner, c., Benach, J., Gimeno, d., & Benavides, F.
G. (2007). A glossary for the social epidemiology of work organisation: part
3. terms from the sociology of labour markets. Journal of Epidemiology and
Community Health, 61, 6-8.
Reference
losby, J. l., else, J. F., Kingslow, M. e., edgcomb, e. l., Malm, e. T., & Kao, v. (2002) Informal
economy literature review. Retrieved May 27, 2009, from
http://www.fieldus.org/projects/pdf/Informaleconomy.pdf
informal employments and informal jobs. non-regulated placement in the
labour market usually involves an informal arrangement between the employee
and employers (informal employment) or self-employment (informal jobs), and
hence does not imply a market exchange of labour, but of products or services.
informal employment and informal jobs prevail in the informal economy but nonformal
job contracts may occur in legal, registered firms (Harding & Jenkins,
1989). in several countries, workers' entitlement to social benefits such as paid
retirement, sickness or maternity leaves and access to health care are dependent
on the possession of a formal job contract (williams & windebank, 1998). there
are also employment guarantees for formally employed workers, such as legal
limits on work-hours, compensations for firing, and so on, which are not available
to informal workers. therefore, informal employment is a particular type of
precarious job because it expresses a sub-standard form of placement in the
labour market (santana & loomis, 2004). Besides a lack of social benefits,
workers engaged in informal employment or informal jobs tend to have low
salaries, high turnover, lack of security, poorly-defined work-hours and limited
unionisation.
References
Harding, p., & Jenkins, R. The myth of the hidden economy. philadelphia: open University
press, 1989.
Santana, v. S., & loomis, d. (2004). Informal jobs and nonfatal occupational injuries. Annals
of Occupational Hygiene, 48(2), 147–157.
Williams, C., & Windebank, J. (1998). Informal employment in the advanced economies.
london: Routledge Taylor and Francis group.
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