Informal employment in Ukraine and formation of institutional conditions of its minimization

Abstract

The article presents the results of the study on the structure and scale of spread of informal employment in Ukrainian labor market. Based on the analysis of the received estimates, the author makes a social and economic profile of the average worker involved in informal labor relations. The peculiarity of the study is that all estimates are considered separately for hired labor and self-employment, which allows to identify the internal heterogeneity of the structure of informal employment in Ukraine. According to the results of the econometric modeling, the main socio-economic, demographic, settlement, professional and sectoral factors that determine the involvement of the individual in informal employment in Ukraine are identified. Described the basics of legal regulation of labor relations as a formal institution influencing the dynamics of informal employment. Established the relationship between the level of flexibility in the regulation of the labor market in the country and the extent of informal employment among its population. It has been shown that in economies with flexible regulation, as a rule, informal employment is lower. Based on assessments and analysis of the flexibility of labor market regulation in Ukraine by such components as hiring, working hours and staff reductions (rules and costs), bottlenecks in the national legislation have been identified that can cause increased informal employment, which in turn helped determine the main institutional conditions for its minimization.