Determinants of Choice of Employment in Russia

In a general sense, the informal economy is a sector that is hidden both from government regulation and from official statistics. The topic of informal employment, which became widespread in the second half of the 20th century, is relevant for researchers both in terms of the success of tax policy and legal protection of citizens. There are various methods for obtaining an estimate of the share of informal employment; for the purposes of this paper, the method of direct evaluations is preferable, since it is necessary to analyze not only the size of informal employment but also its qualitative components. The material for the work was the data from the RLMS-HSE survey, which is a representative sample of the adult population of Russia. The models describe the dependence of the individual's choice of informal employment on various factors. Hypotheses are tested on the impact on the choice of the size of the living wage, the type of settlement, the number of employees of the organization and the labor legislation relief. Analysis of various specifications allows to see the characteristics of groups of individuals, in particular, differences in the influence of factors and the wage gap. At the same time, the share of informal, obtained by the method of direct estimates based on RLMS-HSE data, differs from the share presented in official statistical sources, but there is a general growing trend.