Informalidad, empleo y productividad

Informality not only represents a very significant proportion of the workforce. Informal production units are also widespread as 90% of entrepreneurs of the production units identified with the household surveys are not registered. They absorb a significant proportion of the workforce but only represent less than one tenth of the national value added. The differences in average labor productivity between the formal and the informal sector are very large and, what is more worrying is that the revenue they generate is not much more than the equivalent of a minimum wage. In these circumstances it is highly unlikely that a reduction in direct costs to formalize will be sufficient to induce them to join the formal economy. Moreover the new law leaves out MSEs the vast majority of these production units.