ILO Sub-Regional Office for Southern Africa, Harare

Employment, unemployment and informality in Zimbabwe - Concepts and data for coherent policy-making

This current paper presents a comprehensive overview on Employment, Unemployment and Informality in Zimbabwe. It begins by discussing how the colonial legacy still shapes the way informality is viewed, and then introduces some statistical concepts that are useful to analyze the informal economy. This is followed by an empirical part that is based on the 2004 Labour Force Survey. It presents data on employment, unemployment and the extent of informality, and then goes into different dimensions of decent work and job quality – such as working hours, incomes and occupational health and safety risks. The paper concludes by extracting the main findings and discussing their implications for coherent policy-making.