Share of workers in informal employment
What you should know about this indicator
- Informal employment encompasses all work activities done without formal arrangements (in law or in practice). Informality is a characteristic of the job, not the worker. These are often jobs without basic social or legal protection and employment benefits. It excludes illegal and illicit activities.
- This indicator is particularly important in low- and middle-income countries, where informal employment accounts for a large share of total work and provides a main source of income for many households.
- Employment refers to people of working age who worked for at least an hour during the reference period (typically a week), whether in paid employment or self-employment.
- This data comes from national sources, typically labor force surveys, household surveys, or population censuses. Each country uses its own definitions and methods, so this data may not be directly comparable across countries and over time.
- This data follows the standards of the 13th International Classification of Labour Statisticians (ICLS). Under this framework, employment includes work for pay or profit, including self-employment, as well as the production of goods for own use (such as subsistence farming). Changes in the definition of employment also affect who is counted as unemployed or outside the labor force. Because definitions were updated under the 19th ICLS, data using the newer definitions is not fully comparable with data based on the 13th ICLS. You can read more about the definitions in this explainer by the ILO.
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Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
In the case of Chile, we only select informal employment estimates from 2018 onward, given inconsistencies in the official series for previous years.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Share of workers in informal employment”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from International Labour Organization. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260325-171315/grapher/share-in-informal-employment.html [online resource] (archived on March 25, 2026).How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
International Labour Organization – with major processing by Our World in DataFull citation
International Labour Organization – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Share of workers in informal employment” [dataset]. International Labour Organization, “Data from multiple sources” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260325-171315/grapher/share-in-informal-employment.html (archived on March 25, 2026).Download
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Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.
Data API
Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.
Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-in-informal-employment.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseMetadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-in-informal-employment.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseExcel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-in-informal-employment.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests
# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-in-informal-employment.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})
# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-in-informal-employment.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()R
library(jsonlite)
# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-in-informal-employment.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-in-informal-employment.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-in-informal-employment.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear