Informal Employment of Rural Population of Ukraine

Unprecedented reduction of a number of working places in the social sector of agriculture, which took place due to reformation of the agrarian sector, resulted in a mass dismissal of agricultural employees and significant growth of unemployment in rural districts. This also resulted in transition of dismissed agrarians into the informal sector of agriculture, which accounts now for more than 3 million people living in rural districts. Specific feature of informal rural employment is its concentration in agricultural production, which is performed in private farms. Employment in non-agricultural types of activity in the informal sector in rural districts is still small. The qualitative composition of those employed in the informal sector is characterised with predominance, among them, of socially vulnerable categories of employees that cannot compete on equal terms in the agrarian labour market (rural youth, elderly people, and people with a low level of education). Today, the informal rural employment is an objective necessity of functioning of the modern agrarian labour market, since, to a certain extent, is compensates negative consequences of agrarian reformation. It is inefficient and irrational in its current state. Provision of productive employment of rural population in the informal sector and increase of its efficiency require a well thought-out state regulation of rural population employment in the context of development of institutional, legal, organisational, economic and many other conditions of development of small and medium agrarian business.