Programme Areas: Statistics*
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Programme Objectives:
The founders of WIEGO recognized the power of statistics in making visible the importance of the informal economy and the situation of those working in it. In the mid-1990’s when WIEGO began, the informal sector was a relatively new concept in labour statistics. However, this concept did not cover certain types of informal wage employment outside informal enterprises. And as a new area of statistics, few of countries had collected data on the informal sector. Only limited ad hoc estimates were available on the size of the informal economy more broadly defined and the situation of informal workers. In order to address these problems, the WIEGO Statistics Programme has worked along two broad lines toward:
- developing statistics on the informal economy as an essential component of mainstream or official statistics at national, regional and international levels; this involves encouraging countries to include the topic in data collection activities as well as donor funding for it, and contributing to the development of improved classifications, concepts and methods for data collection and for estimation of the contribution to the national economy; and
- ensuring that statistics and analysis are available to policy makers, researchers and advocates in easily accessible formats by preparing compilations of data and reports on the size and contribution of the informal economy and the characteristics and situation of workers in it.
Value Added
A major strength of the WIEGO Statistics Programme is the strong collaboration it has developed between users of statistics – the member-based organizations of informal workers, NGOs, research institutions and development agencies - and the producers of official statistics. The WIEGO Statistics Programme has built on the efforts of and worked collaboratively with national statistics offices –especially those which place high priority on statistics on informal employment as well as international organizations: specifically the ILO, which under the international statistical system is responsible for labour force statistics, the United Nations Statistics Division, which is responsible for the international system of national accounts (SNA) and the Expert Group on Informal Sector Statistics, called the Delhi Group. The latter group was formed in 1997 by countries interested in improving statistics on the informal sector and reports regularly to the United Nations Statistical Commission. WIEGO has been an active member since 1998.
Currently, WIEGO is represented on the steering committee for the United Nations Development Accounts Project on Statistics on Informal Sector and Informal Employment , based at UNESCAP and on the ECE/ILO/EUROSTAT Task Force for the Measurement of Quality of Employment.
The collaborative ties and expertise of the Statistics Programme were strengthened further with the addition of James Heintz, a labour economist based at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, as coordinator of research in 2005 and with Françoise Carré a specialist in labour economics, industrial relations, and comparative employment systems based at the University of Massachusetts Boston Center for Social Policy, as a second coordinator of research in 2007.
Long-Term Goals
Improved availability of data on informal employment and related concepts:
- data for a critical mass of countries on the informal economy – size, composition, contribution and earnings and poverty risks of informal workers; and
- regular tabulations of total employment that disaggregates the labour force on the dimensions of agriculture/non-agriculture, employment status and formal and informal at national and international levels.
Improved methods and classifications relating to informal employment, specifically:
- application of the framework on informal employment to developed countries
- revision of the International Classification of Status in Employment (ICSE) to make it more sensitive to the statuses of workers in informal employment in both developed and developing countries.
A network of analysts worldwide and a body of statistical resources being used for research on key issues related to informal employment including:
- the situation of workers and trends in different types of informal employment;
- labour force segmentation, its patterns and determinants; and
- economic policy research and development alternatives.
Past Activities and Accomplishments
- Workshop on Measuring Informal Employment in Developed Countries, October 31-November 2008, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge MA. This workshop brought together producers and users of statistics on employment to explore possibilities and challenges involved in capturing in official statistics the varied forms of informal and/or non-standard employment – short-term, temporary, contracted, etc – across developed countries (see workshop materials in the right sidebar).
- Progress
of the World’s Women 2005: Women, Work and Poverty by
Martha Chen, Joann Vanek, Francie Lund, James Heintz with Renana
Jhabvala and Christine Bonner. This report, which was prepared
for UNIFEM, with support from UNDP and the ILO, presents new analytic frameworks and data on the links between informal employment, poverty and gender inequality.
- Mainstreaming
Informal Employment and Gender in Poverty Reduction by
Marty Chen, Joann Vanek and Marilyn Carr (2004). The book, which was prepared for the Commonwealth Secretariat, includes a compilation and analysis of the available data on gender segmentation in the informal economy , earnings and the risk of poverty.
- Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture, prepared for the 90th session of the International Labour Conference in 2002. The report, which was written by Marty Chen and Joann Vanek for the ILO, provides a statistical picture - using available national data - of the informal economy worldwide. It is mainly based on a compilation of official statistics by Jacques Charmes and his development of the residual method to prepare estimates of informal employment where direct measures are not available. Addition data included case studies of India, Mexico and South Africa were prepared by national experts.
Other Important Collaborative Activities
- An International Conference, The Informal Sector and Informal Employment was held in Hanoi ,Viet Nam 6-7 May 2010. The Conference was sponsored by the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences (VASS) and the Institut de Recherche pour le Developpment (IRD) in partnership with the General Statistical Office (GSO), the Ministry of Labour Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISSA), the Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD),the Developpement Institutions & Analyses de long terme (DIAL) , the Department for International Development (DIFID), the ILO, UNDP, and the World Bank.
The purpose of the conference was to:
1) to promote the collection of data on informal sector and informal employemnt and assess the methods used;
2) discuss new research findings on informal sector and informal employment and related topics and
3) describe new policies for the informal sector and job creation.
Joann Vanek attended as well as several members of the WIEGO Statistics Programme Advisory Committee: Ralf Hussmanns, Margarita Guerrero, Jacques Charmes. Joann presented a paper co-authored with James Hieintz: "Women and men in the informal economy 2010 - a statistical picture: plans for an updated report."
The Viet Nam News - the local English language paper - reported on the conference in the following lead article: Home business needs support (May 7, 2010)
- Contributed to the efforts of the Millennium
Project Task Force on Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality and the Sub-Group on Gender Indicators of the United Nations Interagency Expert Group on MDG Indicators (IAEG) which resulted in the recommendation of the development of a background indicator – gender differences in the structure of employment – for monitoring progress toward achieving equality in employment (MDG 3) at the national level. This indicator includes data on status in employment, employment in agriculture and non-agricultural sectors, and formal and informal employment. The background indicator is in the Report of the September 2005 IAEG Subgroup Meeting
- Active participation at meetings of the Expert
Group on Informal Sector Statistics (the Delhi Group) – including the presentation of papers – from the second meeting held in Ankara in 1998 to the present (See "Additional Resources," side bar)
- Workshop on Informal Sector
Statistics in Latin America – October 16-18, 2001 in Santiago,
Chile in collaboration with ILO/Latin America. Seven Latin American
countries participated to assess progress and gaps in the measurement
of the informal sector in the region. (View papers and meeting reports)
- Study on place of work – in collaboration with United Nations Statistics Division and ILO Statistics Bureau. Methodological research and testing on the inclusion of the variable “place of work “ in household surveys – particularly labour force surveys – with the objective of improving the collection of data on home-based workers and street vendors. A meeting on this work of this project was held in Geneva in 2000 and ILO published the research in the report, On
Measuring Place of Work in 2002.
- Five meetings of the WIEGO advisory group on statistics to plan and review the Programme’s activities from 1997 to 2002;
subsequent meetings have and will be by teleconference. (See reports of last two teleconferences under "WIEGO Statistics Programme Advisory
Committee," right sidebar, top)
Current Activities
- Work on the follow-up to the meeting on “Measuring Informal Meeting in Developed countries” through revision of meeting documents and preparation of follow-up research proposals.
- Participation in the team preparing the ILO, Delhi Group publication, Manual on Surveys of Informal Employment and Informal Sector;
- Promotion of the collection and analysis of data on informal sector and informal enmployment in national surveys through providing technical advice to countries and international and regional organizations and ad hoc groups.
- Planning and preparation of an update of the 2002 ILO publication Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture.