Research of the Informal Employment in the Russian Labour Market

In general terms, the informal economy is a sphere, hidden both from state regulation, and from official statistics. The topic of informal employment became widespread not long ago, in the second half of the 20th century, is relevant for researchers both in terms of the success of fiscal policy, and the legal protection of citizens. There are various methods for estimating the share of informal employment, for the purpose of this paper is preferred method of direct assessment, because it is necessary not only to determine the extent of informal employment, but also to analyze the quality of its components. The material for this work was provided by data RLMS-HSE survey, a representative sample of the adult population of Russia. The model describes the dependence of the individual's choice of informal employment as the main place of work on various factors: the respondent's age, number of children, the size of the settlement, having of education, sex, hourly wages, disability, marital status, as well as the year of the interview. All respondents are divided into two categories according to their level of hourly wages, and then three separate regressions - the total for the two subsamples are analyzed. The analysis allows saying that male gender and the presence of disability increase the probability of selection informality. Belonging to the female gender, increasing age, the presence of specialized secondary or higher education, marriage, on the contrary, reduce the probability of selecting informality. The share of informal, obtained by the method of direct assessments on the basis of RLMS-HSE data estimates, is significantly different from the proportion represented by official statistical sources; however, there is a general upward trend.