非正规部门就业:效应与对策

我国当前和未来就业形势不容乐观，非正规门就业不仅是缓解就业压力的有效途径之一，也能够促进社会经济持续稳定发展。针对非正规部门就业存在的问题，应采取鼓励非正规部门发展等措施促进非正规部门就业。     

深圳非正规就业发展的实证分析

非正规就业对加快城市化进程,缓解就业压力,促进社会和谐具有重要的意义,深圳的非正规就业发展更具代表性。文章采用SPSS数据模型,以非正规就业发展的时间序列数据为基础,对深圳非正规就业部门、非正规就业者的规模、非正规就业对GDP和产业经济发展的关联与贡献进行了实证分析。     

促进就业的财政政策选择

中国作为经济转轨时期的发展中国家，就业形势越来越严峻。本文在对中国就业现状进行分析的基础上，提出解决就业问题一是要通过有效实施财政政策，确保适度的经济增长速度以有效控制失业率；二是建立市场导向就业机制，实现就业的计划机制与市场机制的并轨；三是鼓励和推动非正规部门的发展，促进非正规就业，实现就业模式的转换；此外，还应进一步控制人口数量的增长，加大人力资本投资，提高劳动力素质。     

非正规就业破解就业压力

今后10～15年间,我国非正规就业将呈现以下趋势: 1.非正规部门将得到巨大的发展,非正规就业比例将迅速上升,成为我国城镇最主要的就业部门。阻碍这一趋势发展的因素主要包括:非正规部门生存环境恶劣,缺乏必要的政策保障、资金信贷渠道、场地设施等;非正规从业者处于“低技能、低收入、高风险”的境地,缺乏必要的社会保障、法律保护和技能培训。     

论古典二元经济理论的适用性:基于正规—非正规部门的视角

古典二元经济理论将非正规部门视为一种边缘现象,认为其就业规模会随着经济的发展而逐步缩减。而在中国,非正规部门已成为四元经济结构的重要部分,但尚无经验研究探讨中国的经济发展与非正规就业存在何种关联,原因之一在于缺乏对非正规就业规模的认识。本文以"经济活动人口-失业人口-正规部门就业人员"的思路估算31个省区市1990、1995、2000、2005、2010年城镇非正规部门的就业规模,研究表明:2000-2010年中国城镇的非正规部门就业人数维持在1.2亿人左右,2010年占城镇经济活动人口的32.3%,是吸纳城镇就业的最大部门。以估算结果为基础,拟合面板数据模型表明:就中国而言,古典二元经济理论并不适用于人均GDP低于2.2万元的发展阶段,但随着经济发展水平的进一步提高,非正规部门的就业规模存在逐步缩减的趋势。     

农民市民化过程中的非正规就业

农民市民化是我国经济持续发展和城市化的必然趋势和结果，在我国，非正规就业是实现农民市民化的主要途径。文章分析了非正规就业成为农民市民化主要途径的原因，探讨了非正规就业在促进农民市民化过程中出现的问题。最后，对如何进一步发展农民市民化进程中的非正规就业提出了一些对策措施。     

规范发展我国非正规就业的对策

非正规就业是我国目前解决就业问题的重要途径，发展过程中仍然存在许多问题：劳动关系松散而极不稳定；劳动条件差而工资待遇低；非正规就业人员缺乏来自社会的制度性保护；缺少职业培训以及就业服务；多头管理，缺少统一的管理部门；相关规定操作性不强，缺乏专门的法律政策等。针对非正规就业发展中存在的问题。应当从管理体系、就业制度、社会保障、法规政策等方面加以规范。     

关于中国经济发展与非正规就业的现状研究

本文回顾了国内外对非正规就业的理论研究，通过宏观上对非正规就业与经济发展程度在国际国内差异的比较，认为我国非正规就业与现今的经济发展阶段相适应，在就业数量和比例方面具有较大就业岗位创造的潜力，并且，与国际普遍认知不同，中国非正规就业与正规就业之间存在替代而非互补的关系，同时指出非正规就业重要性和其就业现状的不匹配，将在未来对经济发展产生瓶颈式的制约，并提出相应的微观和宏观建议，以促进我国的经济长远发展和社会稳定。     

"城中村"非正规部门形成发展机制——以深圳市蔡屋围为例

非正规部门以其就业门槛低、方便灵活等特点成为城市边缘阶层就业和消费的主要部门,“城中村”既是城市低收入群体和流动人口的聚居区,也是非正规部门相对集中的区域。文章通过对位于深圳市中心区的“城中村”———蔡屋围的案例研究,探讨了非正规部门非正规化、半正规化和正规化的三种发展过程及其形成原因和内在机制,指出由于现阶段“城中村”特殊的经济社会体系和管理体制以及非正规部门在城市发展中承担着为低收入人口提供就业和服务的特殊功能,城市政府应降低门槛,允许非正规部门以非正规化的形式存在,但应纳入管理;对处于不同发展阶段的非正规部门采取不同的政策,使之有序发展,最终步入正规化的轨道。     

非正规就业及其社会保障基金筹集研究

非正规就业是我国近几年来新兴的一种就业形式 ,也称“候鸟式”就业。这种就业形式在诸如缓解就业和社会保障等的压力上有着重要的作用。文章就我国非正规就业的产生、发展及其作用 ,非正规部门就业的社会保障基金的筹集等问题进行了分析。     

Sectoral Selection and Informality: a Nicaraguan Case Study

Using microdata from the 1998 and 1993 Nicaraguan Living Standards Measurement Survey, this paper analyzes the relative size and attractiveness of formal and informal sector employment. Switching regression models of the formal/informal sector employment choice indicate that education across years and gender are the primary determinants of formal sector participation. Furthermore, the formal sector is characterized by positive selection. The results for the informal sector are less definitive, but are also suggestive of positive selection. These findings imply that the informal and formal sectors in Nicaragua contribute positively to the overall economy by attracting those individuals best suited for (in)formal sector employment.     

Trade Reform and Informal Wages

When trade reform contracts protected formal sectors in developing countries and the formal workers move to the informal sector for employment, does that reduce informal wages? Using a 2 × 2 Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson (HOS) structure with formal–informal production organization for the same commodity, we show that a tariff cut in the import‐competing sector increases both informal wage and employment under very reasonable assumptions. An increase in the price of the export commodity will also increase informal wages, although aggregate informal employment unambiguously falls even if the informal export sector is labor intensive. Furthermore, the formal–informal segmentation of each sector opens up an interesting, hitherto unexplored, possibility that the informal export sector may contract despite a price increase in this sector. Change in the overall size of the export sector is also ambiguous and conditional on the relative strengths of changes in these two segments.     

Informality,public employment and employment protection in developing countries

This paper proposes an equilibrium matching model for developing countries’ labor markets where the interaction between public, formal private and informal private sectors are taken into account. Theoretical analysis shows that gains from reforms aiming at liberalizing formal labor markets can be annulled by shifts in the public sector employment and wage policies. Since the public sector accounts for a substantial share of employment in developing countries, this approach is crucial to understand the main labor market outcomes of such economies. Wages offered by the public sector increase the outside option value of the workers during the bargaining processes in the formal and informal sectors. It becomes more profitable for workers to search on-the-job, in order to move to these more attractive and more stable types of jobs. The public sector therefore acts as an additional tax for the formal private firms. Using data on workers’ flows from Egypt, we show empirically and theoretically that the liberalization of labor markets plays against informal employment by increasing the profitability, and hence job creations, of formal jobs. The latter effect is however dampened or even sometimes nullified by the increase of the offered wages in the public sector observed at the same time.     

Transitions across labor market states including formal/informal division in Egypt

This study examines the worker transitions across labor market states including formal/informal division using panel data of 2006 to 2012 from Egypt. We generate a broad set of facts about labor market dynamics in Egypt. We first develop transition probabilities by gender across different labor market states including formal/informal sectors utilizing Markov transition processes. Government employment is the most persistent labor market state for both men and women and the out of labor force is the second most persistent labor market state for women. Unemployment is the most mobile labor market state. Informal private wage work and self‐employed–agriculture are also relatively mobile labor market states. We next identify the effects of individual, household and job characteristics on different mobility patterns by estimating multinomial logit models. We find that gender, age, education, experience, and several sectors of economic activity are associated with the transition probabilities between the labor market states considered such as formal wage, informal wage, self‐employment, unemployment, government employment, and out of labor market. Education, in particular, university degree or above is noted to play a vital role in the probability of transitions across several labor market states.     

Job creation and job destruction in the presence of informal markets

In developing economies, the fraction of informal workers can be as high as 70% of total employment. For economies with significant informal sectors, business cycle fluctuations and labor market policy interventions can have important effects not only on the unemployment rate, but also on the allocation of workers across regulated and unregulated jobs. In this paper, using worker flows data from Brazil, we build, calibrate, and simulate a two-sector search and matching labor market model, in which firms have the choice of hiring workers formally or informally. We show that our model can explain well the main cyclical patterns that lead to those cyclical reallocations. We also show how the effect of government interventions in the labor market depend on the magnitude of the reallocation of labor across regulated and unregulated sectors. For our calibration, policies that decrease the cost of formal jobs, or increase the cost of informality, raise the share of formal employment while reducing unemployment.     

Allocation of Labor in Urban West Africa: Insights from the Pattern of Labor Supply and Skill Premiums

Using comparable data from five West African capitals, we assess the rationale behind development policies targeting high rates of school enrollment through the prism of allocation of labor and earnings effects of skills across the formal and informal sectors, and not working. We find that people with high levels of education allocate to the small formal sector, while less educated workers allocate to the informal sector. While high levels of education are given more value in the relatively smaller sectors of salaried employment, observed skills like education appear to be fairly unprofitable in the larger self-employment sector. The fact that only the small formal sector in urban West Africa both seems to absorb highly educated workers and provide high skill premiums may be an important reason for the observed low demand for education and high dropout rates.     

Are labor markets segmented in developing countries? A semiparametric approach

We test the hypothesis that observably similar workers earn higher wages in the formal sector than in the informal sector in developing nations. Using data from Argentina's household survey and various definitions of informal employment, we find that on average, formal wages are higher than informal wages. Parametric tests suggest that a formal premium remains after controlling for individual and establishment characteristics. However, this approach suffers from several econometric problems, which we address with semiparametric methods. The resulting formal premium estimates prove either small and insignificant, or negative. Neither do we find significant differences in measures of job satisfaction between the two sectors. We invoke these results to question the mainstream view that labor markets are segmented along formal/informal lines in developing nations such as Argentina.     

Evidence on the impact of minimum wage laws in an informal sector: Domestic workers in South Africa

What happens when a previously uncovered labor market is regulated? We exploit the introduction of a minimum wage in South Africa and variation in the intensity of this law to identify increases in wages for domestic workers and no statistically significant effects on employment on the intensive or extensive margins. These large, partial responses to the law are somewhat surprising, given the lack of monitoring and enforcement in this informal sector. We interpret these changes as evidence that strong external sanctions are not necessary for new labor legislation to have a significant impact on informal sectors of developing countries, at least in the short-run.     

New forms of labour contract and labour flexibility in Russia

This paper assesses the claims that employment in the new Russian private sector relies heavily on informal and unregistered labour agreements and that the violation of existing labour law by new private employers is driven by their need for more flexible working arrangements.
The paper shows that these claims are unsupported on every count. The new private sector does not rely heavily on informal or illegal forms of employment and there is no evidence that it uses labour more flexibly, in any of the usual senses of the term, than the traditional sectors of the economy. The conclusion is that there is no economic justification for the systematic violation of the existing labour legislation. It is suggested, therefore, that enforcement of the existing law is a precondition for its effective reform in those areas in which it might be a barrier to restructuring.     

Modernization,Heterogeneity and Employment in Mexico

The principal objective of this paper is to study the effects of Mexico's recent economic reforms on employment and labour productivity. The author argues that the globalization and modernization entailed by the reforms tended to accentuate the structural heterogeneity and the differentials in productivity levels between different sectors.While in formal activities the growth rate of labour productivity accelerated, the contrary occurred in informal activities. Given the relatively moderate rate of increase in output and employment of formal activities, it is very likely that the greater heterogeneity has contributed to the decrease in the average growth rate of labour productivity as observed in Mexico in the period studied.