In many Latin American economies, the majority of workers have no contract, no benefits, and no legal recognition.
Trabajo informal, informal work, describes economic activity that falls outside the regulatory framework of the state. Workers in the informal sector operate without written contracts, employer-provided benefits, social security contributions, or legal protections against dismissal.1
The concept was first systematically described by anthropologist Keith Hart in a 1973 paper analyzing economic activity in Accra, Ghana. Hart observed that the formal labor market captured only a fraction of actual economic life.2 The International Labour Organization adopted the concept and began measuring informal employment globally.
Across Latin America, informal employment accounts for roughly half of all workers, though the figure varies by country.3 In countries such as Bolivia, Guatemala, and Honduras, informal employment exceeds seventy percent. Even in larger economies like Mexico and Colombia, the share is substantial.
The trabajo in trabajo informal carries the same etymological root as the French travail, a word descended from a Latin torture device. The adjective informal adds a second layer, defining these workers by what they lack relative to the formal system.
Informal workers include street vendors, domestic workers, construction day laborers, home-based garment workers, and self-employed tradespeople. Many are not choosing informality but are excluded from formal employment by barriers of education, documentation, geography, or discrimination.1
The ILO distinguishes between informal employment, a characteristic of the job, and informal economy, a characteristic of the enterprise. A worker can hold an informal job within a formal company, as when a registered business hires day laborers without contracts.3
The existence of trabajo informal at scale challenges the assumption that employment, as designed by the industrial system, is the universal form of work. In much of the world, the formal employment relationship never became the norm. The system described in this project is one arrangement, and for billions of people it remains an arrangement to which they do not have access.1