Informal Employment in Russia: Combining Disadvantages and Opportunities

The paper discusses the problem of informal employment in Russia, its structure and the factors contributing to the individual decisions making when choosing specific employment type. Informal employment is a highly diverse area comprising individuals with different profiles and motivations to prefer specific informal options over formal employment. Empirical findings using the 2003 NOBUS dataset confirm that defined groups of informally employed individuals are consistently different according to their main characteristics. This finding allows us to regard informal employment as a superior entrepreneurial sector or an inferior disadvantaged sector of the labour market depending on the specific segment.