Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, No Jobs: Labor Markets and Informal Work in Egypt, El Salvador, India, Russia, and South Africa

Informal employment has a significant presence in developing countries. This employment, which includes day labour, street vending, and domestic work, is characterised by poor working conditions, low wages, and a lack of basic labour standards for the workers. It is argued that improving the economic position of informal workers is a potentially powerful strategy for lifting living standards and reducing poverty in the developing countries. This volume presents a detailed analysis of the informal work situation in five countries: Egypt, El Salvador, India, Russia, and South Africa. It aims to provide a benchmark against which to measure informal employment and to identify opportunities within each case study country for policy changes. It identifies informal employment trends and puts forward an ideal and comprehensive response to workforce development, with a particular focus on the working poor in the informal economy. Common findings to emerge from the studies are that informal employment is not just caused by a lack of good workers but is largely driven by a lack of good jobs, and, in many countries, the informal sector is growing more rapidly than the formal sector, calling into question the theory that informal employment is caused by ‘lack of growth’. The chapters are as follows: Will better workers lead to better jobs in the developing world / L. Josh Bivens and Sarah Gammage (p. 1-30); Egypt: growing informality, 1990-2003 / Alia El-Mahdi and Mona Amer (p. 31-86); Formal and informal employment in El Salvador: a study of labor development / Edgar Lara Lopez (p. 87-198); Economic reforms and employment in India / Mridula Sharma (p. 199-266); Informal labor markets and the Russian workforce: strategies for survival / Oksana Sinyavskaya and Daria Popova (p. 267-368); South Africa: bringing informal workers into the regulated sphere, overcoming Apartheid’s legacy / Wolfe Braude (p. 369-490); Informal employment: rethinking workforce development / Martha Chen and Joann Vanek (p. 491-502).