Determinants of the labor informality in Colombia for the 2008 - 2017 period

Abstract

The objective of this study is to identify the key drivers that explain labor informality in Colombia in the period from 2008 to 2017. A quantitative descriptive method was adopted to analyze data from the Great Integrated Household Survey (GEIH) conducted by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) as well as several important sources in the literature. Drivers were classified into cyclic and acyclic, depending on their behavior with respect to the general economic cycle. The analysis revealed that Bogotá, Medellín, Manizales, Pereira, and Cali present the lowest rates of informal employment in the country (between 40% and 50%). Additionally, the most outstanding conclusion is that there is a linear or direct relationship between the length of unemployment and informality: the longer individuals are unemployed, the more likely they are to join the informal sector.

Keywords

• economic cycle
• cyclical unemployment
• social inequality
• informal sector
• economic system