List of tables in Annex 3 (p. 38).
Table 1: Main jobs in the informal sector by industry, Viet Nam 2007
Table 2: Number of formal and informal HBs jobs by industry in Vietnam
Table 3: Socio-demographic characteristics of occupied workers by institutional sector
in Vietnam (%)
Table 4: Main job characteristics by institutional sector in Vietnam
Table 5: Socio-demographic characteristics of labour force by institutional sectors
(Hanoi and HCMC)
Table 6: Informal employment in the main job by institutional sector in Vietnam
Table 7: Type of premises among informal household businesses (% of HBs)
Table 8: Average size of IHBs and rate of wage earners
Table 9: Working hours and earnings in the informal sector (including heads of HBs)
Table 10: Informal sector job type structure (% of HBs)
Table 11: Characteristics of jobs in the informal sector
Table 12: Investment amounts and ratios in the informal sector
Table 13: Problems with public officials and corruption in the informal sector
Table 14: Five main problems encountered by the informal sector (% of HBs)
Table 15: Five main needs for assistance of the informal sector (% of HBs)
Table 16: Future prospects for the heads of informal production units (% of HBs)
Table 17: Projections of employment in the informal sector in Vietnam (2007-2015)
Table 18: Employment by institutional sector and area in LFS 2007 & 2009
Table 19: Employment by institutional sector and area in LFS 2007 & 2009 (%)
4
Paradoxically, despite its economic weight, knowledge of the informal economy is extremely
limited in Vietnam as it is in most developing countries and researchers, whether Vietnamese
or foreign, have paid little attention to the subject. This situation is due to a number of factors.
First of all, the concept of what constitutes “informal” is vague with a multitude of definitions
having been put forward by different authors. Secondly, measuring the informal economy is a
tricky business since it operates on the fringes of the economy. Thirdly, the informal economy
suffers from a lack of interest on the part of the authorities as it does not pay (or pays little)
taxes and is seen more as a nuisance (especially in the towns) and a mark of
underdevelopment inevitably doomed to extinction by the country’s economic growth. These
elements explain why there has been no really significant effort to date to improve knowledge
in this area. Moreover, in Vietnam as in other developing countries, the current international
economic crisis is supposed to provoke employment losses and employment restructuring.
This increases the interest for the informal economy, which is one of the main victims of the
crisis.
That is why the ILO in Vietnam has decided to commission a “Study on the Informal economy
in Vietnam”. Apart from the ILO’s obvious interest in labour market
functioning and policies
for statutory reasons, it should be reminded that the ILO was one of the pioneers of the
concept of “informal sector” that drew on the African experience documented in the famous
1972 study. This report sets out to amend this situation by providing accurate statistical data
and in-depth analyses on the informal sector and informal employment in Vietnam for the
first time ever. It draws on the results of several statistical surveys conducted with support
from the authors and largely refers to a book recently published on this subject (Cling et alii,
2010). It is also based on some research lead by the authors on the impact of the economic
crisis in Vietnam and on several interviews conducted with officials from the Ministry of
Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Planning and Investment and the Ministry
of Finance, as well as with Vietnamese academics. Last of all, this report has benefitted from
the debates which took place during the National Workshop on the Informal Sector and
Informal Employment in Vietnam, organized by the “Labour Market Project” (European
Commission-MoLISA-ILO) on 4
th
March 2010 in Hanoi.
1
Previous to 2007, the statistical information on the informal economy (in terms of labour,
income and production) in Vietnam was scarce. Two main sources provided data on non-farm
household businesses (NFHBs) and among them registered and non registered ones: the
Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) and the
Annual Household Business
Survey (AHBS). The two sources provide highly discrepant estimates. While the VHLSS
estimates the number of NFHBs in Vietnam at 9.3 million in 2002, the respective figure given
by the AHBS is 2.9 million. Despite careful intents to reconcile the two databases, the gap
remains highly significant. As regards informal employment, this relatively new concept had
never been measured in Vietnam.
Acknowledging these shortcomings, the General Statistics Office (GSO) launched in 2006 a
joint research project with the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD-DIAL); the
prime objective was to set up a statistical system that would measure Vietnam’s informal
sector and informal employment in a comprehensive and sustainable way, and in-keeping
with international recommendations. The outputs of this still ongoing initiative are many-
fold, providing the core inputs for this report.
1
The authors wish to thank Ina Pietschmann for her support during the preparation of this report and for her
valuable comments made on a first draft. Usual caveats apply.
5
