By choice or by force?: Uncovering the nature of informal employment in urban Mexico

Using a special module of the 2015 Mexican Labour Force Survey with information on workers' preferences for jobs with social security coverage, I estimate that 80 per cent of informal workers in large urban areas would prefer to work in a job that provides them with such coverage. A discrete choice econometric model which distinguishes between wanting a formal job and the probability of getting one shows that schooling increases the chances of being hired in formal employment and of having higher earnings in it.