IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedbwp/16-29.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Who counts as employed?: informal work, employment status, and labor market slack

Author

Listed:
  • Anat Bracha
  • Mary A. Burke

Abstract

Several recent studies find that as of 2015, a significant share of working-age adults in the United States participates in nonstandard work arrangements. Such arrangements tend to lack long-term employment contracts and are often referred to as ?gig economy? jobs. This paper investigates the implications of nonstandard or ?informal? work for the measurement of employment status and labor market slack. Using original survey data, we find that as of 2015 roughly 37 percent of nonretired U.S. adults participated in some type of informal work, and roughly 20 percent participated in informal income-generating activities that did not exclusively involve renting out their own property or selling their own goods. The survey also elicits an individual?s employment status according to the definitions of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). While not the majority, a significant share of those who engage in informal work are classified as not being in the labor force; if all informal workers were counted as employed, the U.S. labor force participation rate (as of 2015) would have been 2 percentage points higher. In addition, individuals who are classified as working ?part-time for economic reasons??those who would like a full-time job but cannot obtain full-time hours?have the highest participation rate in informal work and the highest average hours per month. This latter finding suggests that informal work embodies labor market slack, and we offer several pieces of evidence that support the thesis that workers engage in informal work as a way to compensate for weak labor demand and may therefore drop informal work as formal labor market conditions improve. To estimate the amount of labor market slack embodied in informal work, we convert the total hours of informal work performed by those classified as employed part-time into a number of full-time job equivalents. This exercise yields a figure that ranges from roughly 275,000 to roughly 400,000, depending on the specifics of the calculation. At the same time, we point out that a significant share of informal work hours offer higher wages than what the same individuals earn in their formal jobs. Therefore, formal wages may need to increase by a relatively large margin moving forward in order to attract additional labor into the formal sector.

Suggested Citation

  • Anat Bracha & Mary A. Burke, 2016. "Who counts as employed?: informal work, employment status, and labor market slack," Working Papers 16-29, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:16-29
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/research-department-working-paper/2016/who-counts-as-employed-informal-work-employment-status-and-labor-market-slack.aspx
    File Function: Summary
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/Workingpapers/PDF/wp1629.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Katharine G. Abraham & John Haltiwanger & Kristin Sandusky & James R. Spletzer, 2013. "Exploring Differences in Employment between Household and Establishment Data," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(S1), pages 129-172.
    2. Daniel Aaronson & Scott Brave & David Kelley, 2016. "Is There Still Slack in the Labor Market?," Chicago Fed Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    3. Anat Bracha & Mary A. Burke & Arman Khachiyan, 2015. "Changing patterns in informal work participation in the United States 2013–2015," Current Policy Perspectives 15-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    4. Stephanie Aaronson & Tomaz Cajner & Bruce Fallick & Felix Galbis-Reig & Christopher Smith & William Wascher, 2014. "Labor Force Participation: Recent Developments and Future Prospects," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 45(2 (Fall)), pages 197-275.
    5. Lawrence F. Katz & Alan B. Krueger, 2016. "The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995-2015," Working Papers 603, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bańbura, Marta & Bobeica, Elena, 2023. "Does the Phillips curve help to forecast euro area inflation?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 364-390.
    2. Bracha, Anat & Burke, Mary A., 2018. "Wage inflation and informal work," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 159-163.
    3. Katharine G. Abraham & John C. Haltiwanger & Kristin Sandusky & James R. Spletzer, 2017. "Measuring the Gig Economy: Current Knowledge and Open Issues," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring and Accounting for Innovation in the Twenty-First Century, pages 257-298, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Christopher Alex Hooton, 2017. "America’s online ‘jobs’: conceptualizations, measurements, and influencing factors," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 52(4), pages 227-249, October.
    5. Olena Kostyshyna & Corinne Luu, 2019. "The Size and Characteristics of Informal (“Gig”) Work in Canada," Staff Analytical Notes 2019-6, Bank of Canada.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. John C. Williams, 2016. "Longview: The Economic Outlook," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    2. John C. Williams, 2017. "Looking Back, Looking Ahead," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    3. Iain W. Long & Vito Polito, 2017. "Job Search, Unemployment Protection and Informal Work in Advanced Economies," CESifo Working Paper Series 6763, CESifo.
    4. Bracha, Anat & Burke, Mary A., 2021. "How Big is the Gig? The Extensive Margin, The Intensive Margin, and The Hidden Margin," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    5. Anat Bracha & Mary A. Burke, 2018. "The ups and downs of the gig economy, 2015–2017," Working Papers 18-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    6. Lael Brainard, 2016. "The \"Gig\" Economy: Implications of the Growth of Contingent Work : a speech at \"Evolution of Work,\" a convening cosponsored by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Sys," Speech 922, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    7. Pedro S. Martins, 2016. "The third worker: Assessing the trade-off between employees and contractors," Working Papers 75, Queen Mary, University of London, School of Business and Management, Centre for Globalisation Research.
    8. Jae Song & David J Price & Fatih Guvenen & Nicholas Bloom & Till von Wachter, 2019. "Firming Up Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(1), pages 1-50.
    9. Werner Eichhorst & Ulf Rinne, 2017. "Digital Challenges for the Welfare State," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 18(04), pages 03-08, December.
    10. Aghion, Philippe & Akcigit, Ufuk & Lequien, Matthieu & Stantcheva, Stefanie, 2017. "Tax simplicity and heterogeneous learning," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 86613, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Carlos Arteta & M. Ayhan Kose & Franziska Ohnsorge & Marc Stocke, 2015. "The Coming U.S. Interest Rate Tightening Cycle: Smooth Sailing or Stormy Waters?," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 1522, Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum.
    12. Joshua Greenstein, 2020. "The Precariat Class Structure and Income Inequality among US Workers: 1980–2018," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 447-469, September.
    13. Danny Yagan, 2019. "Employment Hysteresis from the Great Recession," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(5), pages 2505-2558.
    14. Dale Jorgenson & Mun Ho & Jon Samuels, 2019. "Educational Intensity and the Sources of, and Prospects for, U.S. Economic Growth," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 36, pages 161-186, Spring.
    15. Hirsch, Barry T. & Winters, John V., 2016. "Rotation group bias in measures of multiple job holding," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 160-163.
    16. Robert Fay & James Ketcheson, 2016. "The US Labour Market: How Much Slack Remains?," Staff Analytical Notes 16-9, Bank of Canada.
    17. L. Ferrara. & G. Sestieri., 2014. "US labour market and monetary policy: current debates and challenges," Quarterly selection of articles - Bulletin de la Banque de France, Banque de France, issue 36, pages 111-129, winter.
    18. Dang, Hai-Anh H. & Serajuddin, Umar, 2020. "Tracking the sustainable development goals: Emerging measurement challenges and further reflections," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    19. Basu, Arnab K. & Chau, Nancy H. & Soundararajan, Vidhya, 2019. "Wage fairness in a subcontracted labor market," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 24-42.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    informal work; gig economy; BLS employment status; labor market slack;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E26 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Informal Economy; Underground Economy
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J22 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Time Allocation and Labor Supply
    • J46 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Informal Labor Market

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:16-29. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Spozio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbbous.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.