Informal Worker

The term sounds descriptive but is fundamentally relational: it defines workers by their distance from the state. Coined in 1970s development economics (notably by Keith Hart and later institutionalised by the ILO), “informal” named what could not be measured or governed through existing policy tools. In doing so, it quietly positioned the formal economy as the norm and everything else as residual, transitional, or deficient. That framing no longer matches reality. Today, between 60–80% of the global workforce operates in conditions labelled “informal.” What was once treated as marginal is, in fact, the dominant mode of work in much of the world. The term does important political work: it enables claims for visibility, rights, and protection. But it also encodes a deficit view. Workers are named for what they lack—registration, protection, recognition—rather than for the economic and social value they produce. This risks obscuring the structures that generate informality, including state design, global supply chains, and uneven development.

The term “informal worker” does not simply describe a condition. It imposes a perspective that some find objectionable. By defining workers through absence (“not formal”), it centres the state and its regulatory apparatus as the measure of legitimacy. This framing can be experienced as dismissive or distorting, especially by workers whose livelihoods are stable, skilled, and socially embedded but fall outside bureaucratic recognition. • Progressive: Uses the term to expose exclusion from labour rights and social protection, but increasingly grapples with its limits. Critics within this space argue that the language risks reproducing a deficit lens, even as it seeks to redress injustice. • Neoliberal/institutional: Treats informality as a deviation to be corrected. The implicit goal is incorporation into formal systems—taxation, registration, compliance—often without questioning whether those systems serve workers’ realities. From this perspective, the term can justify interventions that discipline or displace livelihoods in the name of “formalisation.” • Movement-led: Many worker organisations use the term tactically, while openly contesting it. The objection is not semantic but political: “informal” misnames a vast and structured economy, reducing it to a lack rather than recognising it as a primary mode of production and survival. Alternatives like “workers in conditions of informality” attempt to shift the focus from who workers are to the conditions imposed on them. Across these uses, the core tension remains: the term can enable recognition, but it does so by accepting a framing that many workers reject as inaccurate, hierarchical, and rooted in a narrow view of what counts as “real” work.