STATISTICAL INFORMATION

Statistics processing is an essential requisite to describe informal economy and understand it better. Knowing the characteristics of the population and of the economic units inserted in the informal economy is crucial for formulating and implementing policies targeted to it. In order to apply plans and programmes, key social partners need accurate findings on the particular features of the population and of the enterprises operating within the informal economy.

ILO, as well as other international and national organizations, has been making efforts in this sense, in order to be able to get reliable information based on uniform criteria, to better describe and visualize trends, to make cross-country comparisons in this topic, etc.

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This section contains, on one part, documents of interest aiming to propose and recommend different ways to assess the dimensions of informal economy, on the basis of the ILO definition developed by the 2002 International Labour Conference; and on efforts to design indicators as well as possible surveys that may help the various countries and competent institutions to draft model forms which may better reflect informal employment.

Secondly, it lists ILO sites and sites from other international and national organizations which are available for access to diverse labour market indicators of the regional countries.

Special mention is made of 'Panorama Laboral 2004' ('2004 Labour Overview') maintained by the regional countries, containing ample statistical information on the evolution of the most relevant labour market variables and on efforts to measure informal economy in our countries, on the basis of national household surveys.

At the sites of National Statistics Institutes, we endeavour to reflect information supplementing 'Panorama Laboral', so as to achieve a better understanding of the labour market dynamics in these countries.