While the informal sector is the ‘forgotten’ sector in many ways, it provides livelihoods, employment and income for about 2.5 million workers and business owners. One in every six South Africans who work, work in the informal sector. Almost half of these work in firms with employees; these...

This paper provides a comparative summary of recent national statistics from five Latin American countries on employment losses and gains during the peak COVID-19 years compared with pre-pandemic levels. As part of its work on the impact of the pandemic on informal workers, the Women in Informal...

The paper analyses the process of social exclusion and inclusion of the working poor in developing countries, but focusing mostly on women. These processes include: the terms of inclusion of paid workers in global production systems, the barriers to inclusion of the self-employed in global...