The phenomenon of informal employment has a negative impact on the individual level since no respect for labor law is guaranteed, either materially or morally. There is no protection against accidents at work, nor is there any social or medical coverage.
Economically, the impact is even more tangible, especially during this transitional period underwent by the country. Informal work has weakened and dispersed many businesses, creating a significant commercial disorder in which state control of revenues is totally absent.
A survey conducted by the National Observatory of Employment and Qualifications under the Ministry of Youth, Sport and Vocational Integration, in partnership with the National Institute of Statistics has revealed that about one million 300 thousand Tunisians work in the informal sector, or 36% of total workers.
Presented Wednesday at a conference held in Tunis by the Ministry of Youth, Sport and Vocational Integration in association with the United Nations Development Program and the International Labor Organization, the survey shows that 39% of workers in the informal sector are men and 27% are women.
The survey, which involved a sample of about 11 thousand people aged between 15 and 60 years distributed throughout the country, also showed that 52% of these workers are young and 83% are without degrees or vocational certificates.
Speaking to reporters, Fakher Zaïbi, director of the National Observatory of Employment and Qualifications stressed that nearly 10% of graduates work in the informal sector, noting that the sectors of agriculture, construction and public works, trade, and social services take 80% of informal workers.
Shift from the informal to the formal!
He said, on this occasion, that the survey aims to draw up an inventory of the situation of informal work in Tunisia to develop a program for the transition from the informal sector to the formal sector.
In this context, the speaker stressed that the survey recommends the governance of organized labor, identifying responsibilities, taking measures to facilitate access to funding, ensuring control and monitoring and the setting up an action plan to exit from informal work and move to formal work which requires the mobilization of efforts of all parties, including civil society.
It is commonly accepted that the informal sector is a survival economy. It allows the poorest people to find the means of their subsistence in societies where formal employment is scarce, but its capacity to create employment and generate capital accumulation is non-existent.
Therefore, the informal sector can generate income, but only the State and the formal private sector can create the conditions for a real development process (…).
