Informal employment
Box 15. Definition of informal sector, employment in informal sector, informal employment
and of informal employment in Thailand
“Employment in the informal sector” refers to all workers with jobs in informal sector enterprises
or all persons who were employed in at least one informal sector enterprise, irrespective of
their status in employment and whether it was their main or a secondary job.
“Informal employment” is the total number of informal jobs, whether carried out in formal
sector enterprises, informal sector enterprises or households, including: employees with
informal jobs; employers and own-account workers employed in their own informal sector
enterprises; members of informal producers’ cooperatives; contributing family workers in
formal or informal sector enterprises; and own-account workers engaged in the production of
goods for own end use by their household (Key Indicators of the Labour Market, 2010).
Thailand’s official definition of “informal employment”, which is the definition used in this
publication, is all employed persons without social security coverage.
• Of the nearly 39 million employed persons in Thailand in 2010, 24 million were informally
employed, amounting to 62.4 per cent of total employment (figure 33). The share of informal
employment fluctuated at around 61–64 per cent during the late 2000s (Labour Force Survey,
2005–10).
• Agriculture (including fishing) as well as some service industries (wholesale and retail trade,
hotel and restaurant and other community works) embodied the largest proportion of the
informal–formal employment ratio (figure 34). Informal employment in the agriculture and
fishing sector alone was approximately 58.9 per cent of total informal employment. Electricity,
gas and water supply, financial intermediation, education and extra-territorial organizations
engaged very few informal sector workers (Labour Force Survey, 2005–10).
• The large proportion of the informal employment by industry is in accordance with the large
proportion of informal employment by occupation (figure 35). Within the mostly skilled
agricultural and fishery worker occupation, informal employment accounted in 2010 for 93.4
per cent. Informal service workers and sales accounted for 73.7 per cent of total employment
(Labour Force Survey/Informal Employed Survey, 2010).
• As percentage of non-agricultural employment, the shares of women and men in informal
employment are 43.5 per cent and 41.2 per cent, respectively (Labour Force Survey/Informal
Employed Survey, 2010).