Publications on informal economy

  1. ILO Working paper 27

    Platform work and the employment relationship

    31 March 2021

    This working paper analyses national and supranational case law and legislation about the employment status of platform workers. It does so by referring to the ILO Employment Relationship Recommendation, 2006 (No. 198). It finds that this Recommendation provides for a valuable compass to navigate the issues that emerge from the analysis of the existing case law and legislation about platform work.

  2. ILO Working paper 25

    Homeworking in the Philippines: Bad job ? Good job ?

    09 March 2021

    This report focuses on two categories of homeworkers in the Philippines: industrial homeworkers, who assemble or fabricate goods for factories, retailers or their agents under subcontracting arrangements; and online workers, who render services to their clients or employers via telecommunications technologies and digital platforms.

  3. WIEGO Statistic Brief no. 27

    Home-based Workers in the World: A Statistical Profile

    19 February 2021

    Globally, 260 million women and men are employed in home-based work, including 35 million in developed countries.

  4. ILO Working paper 24

    Online digital labour platforms in China: Working conditions, policy issues and prospects

    02 February 2021

    This paper summarizes the results of an ILO survey, conducted in 2019, of workers’ characteristics and working conditions on three major digital labour platforms in China.

  5. ILO Working paper 22

    Home-based work and homework in Ghana: An exploration

    22 January 2021

    This research report explores the nature and character of home-based work and the more narrow concept of homework in Ghana.

  6. Publication

    Working from home: From invisibility to decent work

    13 January 2021

    With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, many in the world’s workforce have shifted to homeworking, thereby joining the hundreds of millions of workers who have already been working from home for decades.

  7. ILO Working paper 21

    Home bounded - Global outreach: Home-based workers in Turkey

    18 December 2020

    This report focuses on industrial home-based pieceworkers and IT-enabled remote workers, who are commonly referred to in Turkey as “freelancers”.

  8. Policy Brief

    Working from Home: Estimating the worldwide potential

    07 May 2020

    Staying in one’s job but performing work remotely is an excellent strategy for mitigating job losses and allowing for the continuation of many of our economies’ functions, but also for keeping the population safe. The objective of this brief is to estimate the potential share of workers across the different regions of the world who could perform their activities from home, if needed, as well as to discuss some of the policy issues associated with working from home.