South Africa’s Informal Economy: A Statistical Profile

This paper presents a statistical profile of informal employment in South Africa from 2005 to 2007, and attempts to identify the economic value generated by the informal economy in South Africa.

Through descriptive analysis, the paper examines the extent and composition of informal employment and its recent trends. It also highlights the heterogeneity in types of work activities, industries and the returns to informal work.

A key contribution of this paper is that it analyzes South Africa’s informal economy at both the national level and disaggregated by the metropolitan (metro) status of areas.

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