In the absence of alternatives, most jobs are informalWidespread recognition that the informal economy is expanding rather than declining across the developing world has drawn growing attention to measuring its size. Owing to myriad measurement problems and divergences in definitions and methodologies, efforts to measure the size of national informal economies and to derive regional averages should be treated as orders of magnitude rather than as hard numbers.Despite their limitations, these measurement efforts are valuable because they highlight the contemporary significance of informality, and have played a key role in putting the informal economy back on the development agenda after…
