Trends Of Employment In Informal Sector In Romania During Crisis;Economic And Social Effects

The present paper emphasizes the size and trend of employment in the informal sector as affected during the recent years by the crisis and by showing the relation with informal economy. The paper is structured on three parts. The first part focuses on the concepts and methodology popular and recommended by the international organizations together with the ones applied for the estimations presented in the paper. It brings information on the conceptual framework endorsed by International Labour Office (ILO) on the 15-th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (15th ICLS) - on informal sector (which was subsequently included in the revised international System of National Accounts, SNA 1993) and employment in informal sector - and on 17th ICLS, on informal employment. Methods used for obtaining the estimates for Romania figures on informal economy and employment are treated. For the informal economy the method used by National Statistical Institute of Romania (INS) for estimating the underground economy and own calculations were used. For estimating the employment in informal sector a method developed by the authors was applied which consists, on short, on reconciliation between demand and supply available from statistical sources. Second part is dedicated to the analysis on the estimates produced, with observations on the trends induced by the crisis on informal economy and employment. The second also deals with several characteristics and dimensions of the employment in informal sector by gender and economic activities as well as the relation with several macroeconomic and social indicators. Finally, the third and last part proposes the direction of action and policies aimed to combat and reduce the informal sector and to transfer it into the "light", "visible" side, i.e. the formal sector.