Among the countries with available information, Bolivia had the highest share of employment informality, amounting to almost 85 percent of the total employed population. This means that more than three out of every four workers in Bolivia were informally employed in that year. With data from 2024, Chile was one of the countries with the lowest share of informal employment in the region, with around 27.46 percent of the employed population being informally employed.

The average for 2019 based on 10 countries was 55.4 percent. The highest value was in Bolivia: 84.9 percent and the lowest value was in Uruguay: 23.9 percent. The indicator is available from 2000 to 2020. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

In 2016, Central America was the subregion in Latin America and the Caribbean with the highest share of employment informality. The source estimated that almost six every ten workers in Central America and the Caribbean were informally employed (58 and 57.6 percent of the employed population, respectively). The average of informal employment in Latin America and the Caribbean amounted to around 53 percent.

Bolivia and Guatemala were some of the Latin American countries with the highest informal employment rates in the construction sector in 2023. Over ** percent of the construction workers in those countries were informal. Jamaica was the country with the lowest informal construction employment rate. Panama was one of the countries in Latin America with the most construction workers as a share of total employment in cities.

BackgroundInformal employment is a structural characteristic of labor markets in most Latin American countries that may lead to poor mental health outcomes, although research on this relationship is limited. In Ecuador, around 58% of non-agricultural workers are informal. This study aims to examine the association between informal employment and depressive symptoms in the Ecuadorian working population by type of labor relationship (dependent or independent) and gender.MethodsThis cross-sectional study used data from 28,096 non-agricultural workers from the Sixth Ecuadorian Living Conditions Survey (2013/14). Employment profiles were categorized as dependent formal (reference), independent formal, dependent informal, and independent informal. Depressive symptoms were assessed using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Adjusted prevalence ratios (PRa) for the association between employment profiles and depressive symptoms were calculated using Poisson regression models with robust variance. All analyses were performed using Stata v.17.ResultsDepressive symptoms were more prevalent among dependent and independent informal workers than dependent formal workers, both in men (PRa=1.24, 95%CI: 1.09–1.41; PRa=1.22, 95%CI: 1.07–1.39, respectively) and in women (PRa=1.35, 95%CI: 1.19–1.53; PRa=1.30, 95%CI: 1.14–1.48, respectively). Depressive symptoms were more prevalent among men in independent formal jobs than men in dependent formal jobs. Additionally, informal female workers showed the highest prevalence of depressive symptoms across all groups.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that informal employment is a key determinant of mental health inequities in the Ecuadorian working population, especially in women, where informal employment has the highest mental health burden. Further research should consider the heterogeneity of informal employment and integrate a gender perspective using cohort studies.

In 2024, informal employment in Ecuador constituted 68.6 percent of total employment in the country. In this year, the share of the informally employed population increased by over five percentage points in comparison to the percent in 2019. Informal employment is defined as work that is not formally registered or regulated by existing legal frameworks. The informal sector in Ecuador The COVID-19 pandemic has had a great impact on the Ecuadorian job market. It contributed to the raise of unemployment rates and worsening labor conditions, which pushed many workers towards the shadow economy sector. Although informal employment can be observed across the whole national territory, it is a particularly persistent problem in the countryside. In 2022, over 75 percent of the population in rural areas worked in the informal sector, nearly 40 percent more than in urban areas. A common problem across Latin America Economic growth and the increasing level of education in Latin America do not seem to have a positive impact on the problem of informal employment. In almost every Latin American country, the share of the workforce employed in the informal sector exceeded half of the total working population in 2024. In Bolivia, the informal employment exceeded 84 percent. In economies such as Guatemala, Peru, El Salvador, and Paraguay, more than two thirds of the employment force was working in the grey sector. Hindering tax revenues, data collection, or access to social benefits (such as unemployment payments or pensions) are only some of the challenges that both Latin American governments and residents have to face.

Except for Peru, in all selected Latin American countries, informal employment was responsible for most of the employment recovery between the third quarter of 2020 and the third quarter of 2022. This was particularly noticeable in Paraguay and Argentina, informal employment contributed with 83 and 78 percent, respectively. According to the source, the fact that job recovery has been driven by growth in informal occupation in Latin America is due to the sharp fall in informal employment experienced during the most critical phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The average for 2020 based on 19 countries was 41.6 percent. The highest value was in Bolivia: 64.2 percent and the lowest value was in Chile: 19.4 percent. The indicator is available from 1993 to 2020. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

In 2023, the percentage of informal employment in Argentina stood at 50 percent of the total employed population. The share of employment informality has decreased slightly in comparison to the previous year. Argentina is among the countries with the lowest share of informal employment in Latin America.

Vulnerability of the population The main issues of informal employment are the lack of job security, social security, and the low quality of jobs. All factors heavily impact the vulnerability of the population under such conditions. During the last few years, Argentina increased the share of households under the poverty line, in fact, during the first half of 2024, the percentage exceeded 40 percent of homes, more than double the 2018th rate. Labor force and unemployment During the past four decades, the labor participation rate in Argentina has been significantly higher among the male population than their female counterparts. For males, around 70 percent of working age people were part of the workforce, while only around half of females did the same. Nevertheless, the unemployment rate has been decreasing considerably, reaching its lowest point in 2023 since at least 2004.

In 2024, the percentage of informal employment in Peru stood at 72.1 percent of the total employed population. This means that over two thirds of Peruvian workers were considered informally employed. Although this percentage decrease in comparison to the previous year, Peru is still one of the Latin American countries with the highest level of informal employment.

Leftist governments with strong links to organized labor are expected to increase the number of people protected by job security rules. But do they? I explore whether the Left in power at the local level in Brazil cracks down on enterprises that employ non-contract, informal-sector workers, and implements policies aimed at reducing the size of the informal sector. With a close-election regression-discontinuity design, I show that mayors from the Workers’ Party (PT) in fact slow down enforcement and improve conditions in the informal sector, rather than encouraging a shift to formal jobs. This reflects a challenge that leftist parties face across the world: how to simultaneously improve the employment prospects and conditions of workers in precarious employment and those in full-time jobs in the context of increased global competition, segmented labor markets and, in Latin America, truncated welfare states.

In 2023, the percentage of informal employment in Brazil stood at 37 percent of the total employed population. This means that almost two fifths of workers in the country are considered informally employed. Neighboring Uruguay has one of the lowest rates of employment informality in Latin America.

Ratio of persons employed in the formal sector relative to the informal sector, selected Latin American countries, 2020.

In 2023, the percentage of informal employment in Bolivia stood at 84.5 percent of the total employed population. The share of employment informality has decreased by 0.5 percentage points in comparison to the year 2022, when 8.9 percent of workers were considered informally employed. Bolivia is one of the Latin American countries with the highest level of informal employment.

Survey of a nationally representative sample of Mexican adults. (N=1,206). Questions focus on respondents' labor-market traits and social policy attitudes. Interviews occurred in May and June of 2017. Abstract: In Latin America, formal workers (labor insiders) and informal workers (outsiders) tend to be enrolled in distinct welfare programs, so scholars generally assume that a fundamental political cleavage pits insiders against outsiders. According to my original meta-analysis, however, survey-based studies have hitherto shown the two groups to have relatively similar social policy preferences. I seek to reconcile these two scholarly strains by arguing that the insider/outsider binary oversimplifies. Frequent movement by workers between the two sectors and marriages between informal and formal workers endow many with mixed policy interests. Using an original and nationally representative poll of Mexican adults, I show that an insider/outsider attitudinal cleavage does exist but that it is widest between informal and formal workers without mixed interests. I also show how improved survey questions produce stronger relationships between labor traits and attitudes. My findings have implications for the study of social policy coalitions and insider/outsider politics in Latin America and beyond.

Although Lijphart's typology of consensus and majoritarian democracy can be regarded as the most widely used tool to classify democratic regimes, it has been rarely applied to Latin America so far. We try to fill this gap by adapting Lijphart's typological framework to the Latin American context in the following way. In contrast to previous studies, we treat the type of democracy as an independent variable and include informal factors such as clientelism or informal employment in our assessment of democratic patterns. On this basis, we aim to answer the following questions. First, how did the patterns of democracy evolve in Latin America over the two decades between 1990 and 2010 and what kind of differences can be observed in the region? Second, what are the institutional determinants of the observed changes? We focus on the emergence of new parties because of their strong impact on the first dimension of Lijphart's typology. From our observations we draw the following tentative conclusions: If strong new parties established themselves in the party system but failed to gain the presidency, they pushed the system towards consensualism. Conversely, new parties that gained the presidency produced more majoritarian traits.

In 2022, the percentage of informal employment in Panama stood at 54.9 percent of the total employed population. The share of employment informality has continuously increased over the past decade until 2020 when Panama reached its highest level. Panama is among the countries with the highest level of informal employment in Latin America.

In 2023, the percentage of informal employment in Costa Rica stood at 37.1 percent of the total employed population. The share of employment informality has decreased by almost three percentage points in comparison to the previous year, when 39.9 percent of workers were considered informally employed. Costa Rica has one of the lowest levels of informal employment in Latin America.

In 2024, the percentage of informal employment in Colombia stood at 56.14 percent of the total employed population. The share of employment informality has decreased in comparison to 2010, when 68.07 percent of workers were considered informally employed. Colombia is one of the Latin American countries with the highest level of informal employment.

In many Latin American countries, social policy preferences among economically vulnerable citizens seem largely unpolarized. However, current studies rarely confront citizens with realistic policy options and often lack the required detail to capture the heterogeneity of economic vulnerability. Drawing on the dualization debate, we expect individuals facing different degrees of vulnerability to show distinct social policy preferences. Using original survey data from Mexico and a conjoint experiment, our findings reveal a complex divide, where the most economically vulnerable are least supportive of public solutions. Sharing the home with a formal labor market participant does not seem to mitigate social policy skepticism among the vulnerable. In contrast, magnified vulnerability via household composition reduces support for welfare policy expansion. Social policy preferences become much less distinct when policy design alternatives are introduced, suggesting reduced expectations about the state’s role and a lack of clarity about the tangible benefits of social policy reform.