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The record · 20 September 2026

Nearly nine in ten of India’s workers hold an informal job.In France, three in a hundred do.

Eighteen economies, one share each: the people a survey classes as holding an informal job, as a share of everyone in work, split between agriculture and the rest. Not the shadow economy, not unemployment, and one year per country. Everything below is checkable against the live market.

· 7 min read

87.2%of India’s employed held an informal job in 2025, the 22nd highest share of 106 countries; 98.6% in agriculture, 79.1% outside it
3.4%of France’s employed held an informal job in 2025, the 95th of 106; the median country is at 53.4%
56of the 106 countries have more than half of all jobs informal. In 28, fewer than one in ten are

Eighty-seven in a hundred, and three in a hundred

In their latest reported year, 87.2% of India’s employed held an informal job, and 3.4% of France’s. India ranks 22nd of 106 countries by that share, France 95th. The table sets the two among the other economies this desk publishes in, plus Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, South Africa and Italy.

The shares run from one end of the scale to the other. In 56 of the 106 countries more than half of all jobs are informal, and in 28 fewer than one in ten; the median country sits at 53.4%. Niger, at 98.5%, reports the highest share and Switzerland, at 1.1%, the lowest; 17 countries are at 90% or more and 20 under 5%. Among the eighteen, Nigeria is highest at 93.1% and Portugal lowest at 2.3%.

Within a country the split by sector is the steeper contrast. Agriculture is informal almost everywhere: across the 102 countries reporting it the median share is 89.2%, and in 50 it is 90% or more. Outside agriculture the median is 46.7%, and that is where countries part: India is at 98.6% in agriculture and 79.1% outside it, France at 9.6% and 3.2%. Moldova makes the point most sharply, at 94.2% in agriculture and 10.2% outside it, for an overall 55.4%.

Provenance: Source
Informal employment as a share of all employed persons, on the ILO’s harmonised definition, latest year reported, for eighteen economies, with the share within agriculture and outside it. Sorted by the overall share, highest first. The rank is by that share, out of the 106 countries reporting since 2022.
EconomyYearInformal, % of employedIn agricultureOutside agricultureRank of 106
Nigeria202493.1%99.6%90.3%10
Pakistan202588.7%99.0%83.3%21
India202587.2%98.6%79.1%22
Bangladesh202484.0%96.9%73.7%27
Indonesia202381.0%93.9%75.8%30
Egypt202468.6%83.6%65.5%36
Viet Nam202467.0%98.7%56.7%38
Thailand202463.2%90.5%51.2%42
Mexico202556.9%89.8%52.8%47
Brazil202535.6%74.0%32.5%63
South Africa202434.8%35.4%34.8%64
Türkiye202526.6%85.3%17.0%68
Poland202514.4%30.2%12.8%76
Italy20258.4%16.0%8.1%81
Germany20223.9%16.3%3.8%91
Spain20253.8%3.8%3.8%92
France20253.4%9.6%3.2%95
Portugal20252.3%8.9%2.2%103

Income does most of the sorting

Across the 106, the share moves strongly with income: it correlates at minus 0.85 with log GDP per person. Sorted into income thirds, the mean share is 81.0% in the poorest third, 52.9% in the middle and 10.9% in the richest; the medians are 89.2%, 56.0% and 4.3%. The poorest third holds no country under 20%, and the richest none above 56%.

India and France sit on opposite sides of that finding. France’s income per person is 5.8 times India’s, and it is in the richest third; India is in the poorest. Among rich countries the share still ranges: 26.6% in Türkiye, 14.4% in Poland, 8.4% in Italy, 3.9% in Germany, 3.4% in France.

Women’s share is higher than men’s in 53 of the 106 countries, a coin flip overall, but in 26 of the poorest 35 and in only 11 of the richest 36. The median gap runs from women 4.4 points above men in the poorest third to 0.8 points below in the richest. Bangladesh shows the widest gap between the sexes, in the direction of women: 96.0% of employed women hold an informal job against 78.1% of men.

Provenance: SourceWhat the share counts
  1. INFORMAL IS A PROPERTY OF THE JOB, not of the person and not of the law. On the ILO’s harmonised definition an employee holds an informal job when the employer pays no social-security contribution for them, or, where a survey does not ask that, when the job carries neither paid annual leave nor paid sick leave. An own-account worker or an employer holds one when the enterprise is not registered or keeps no formal accounts. Every contributing family worker holds one.
  2. THE SHARE IS OF THE EMPLOYED. Everyone counted is in work. Informal employment is not unemployment, and a country where nine in ten jobs are informal is not a country where nine in ten people are idle.
  3. THE SPLIT IS BY SECTOR OF THE JOB. Agriculture and everything else are counted separately, and the same definition applies in both; a smallholding with no accounts is an informal enterprise in the same sense as an unregistered workshop.

So India’s 87.2% does not say that 87 in a hundred workers evade tax, work illegally or go undeclared: it says that 87.2 in a hundred people in work hold a job that carries no social-security contribution, or belongs to an enterprise with no registration or formal accounts, or is unpaid family work. And France’s 3.4% is the same count on the same definition, read by the ILO from a household income survey rather than a labour force survey.

One share on one definition, and a reading that loses what it counts says something the source does not.

What the share does not say

It does not say who is breaking a law. Informal employment on this definition is a job without a social-security contribution, an enterprise without registration or formal accounts, or unpaid family work; whether any of that is lawful, declared or taxed in a given country is not measured, and the shadow economy is a different quantity estimated by different means.

It does not say who is out of work, nor what anyone earns, nor that anything rose or fell. Every person counted is employed; pay is not in these figures; and each country appears once, in its own latest year, 2022 to 2025. Nothing here compares a country with itself.

And it names no cause and no verdict. Law, enforcement, tax, schooling, the size of farms and custom all sit behind these figures, and none of them is measured here; so nothing here says why India’s share is high or France’s low.

What the data establishes

  • In their latest reported year, 87.2% of India’s employed held an informal job (2025), the 22nd highest share of 106 countries, and 3.4% of France’s (2025), the 95th.
  • Across the 106, the median share is 53.4%; in 56 countries more than half of all jobs are informal and in 28 fewer than one in ten; the range runs from 1.1% in Switzerland to 98.5% in Niger.
  • Agriculture is informal almost everywhere, at a median of 89.2% across the 102 countries reporting it and 90% or more in 50; the non-agricultural median is 46.7%.
  • The share correlates at minus 0.85 with log income; the mean share is 81.0% in the poorest third of countries, 52.9% in the middle and 10.9% in the richest. Women’s share exceeds men’s in 53 of the 106, in 26 of the poorest 35 and 11 of the richest 36.

What it does not

  • That informal workers are idle or unemployed. Every person counted is in work.
  • That informal means illegal, undeclared or untaxed. The definition is about social-security contributions, registration and accounts; lawfulness and tax are not measured, and the shadow economy is a different quantity.
  • That any share rose or fell. One year per country, and different years and instruments across countries: nothing here is a trend.
  • Any cause, including law, enforcement, tax, schooling, farm size or custom, and anything about pay. None of them is measured here.
  • Anything about the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, China, South Korea, the Philippines or Morocco, which do not report this series.

Method

  1. One measure. ILOSTAT dataflow DF_SDG_0831_SEX_ECO_RT, SDG indicator 8.3.1, proportion of informal employment in total employment by sex and by sector, read through the ILO SDMX API on 20 September 2026. For each country the latest year from 2022 to 2025 is used, with the agricultural, non-agricultural, women’s and men’s shares taken from the same source and year. The definition is the ILO’s harmonised one, applied by the ILO to each country’s microdata; a country’s own national definition can differ.
  2. AGGREGATES ARE NOT COUNTRIES. Regions and income groups were removed by keeping only codes in the World Bank’s country list, leaving 106 countries with a share since 2022: 62 whose latest year is 2025, 22 with 2024, 10 with 2023 and 12 with 2022. Every rank and count is out of the 106. The United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, China, South Korea, the Philippines and Morocco do not report this series, which is why the exhibit holds eleven of this desk’s sixteen markets and seven other economies.
  3. THE INSTRUMENTS DIFFER. 58 of the 106 shares come from a labour force survey, 38 from a household income and expenditure survey, 7 from another household survey and 3 from a population census. The 38 include the 27 European countries whose share the ILO computes from EU-SILC, the EU’s income survey, covering people aged 16 and over; France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain in the table are among them. The piece compares them as the ILO publishes them and says so here.
  4. The median is the mean of the 53rd and 54th of the 106 values, 53.297% and 53.504%, shown as 53.4%. 56 countries are above 50% and 28 under 10%; 17 are at 90% or more and 20 under 5%. The agricultural share is reported by 102 of the 106; its median is 89.15%, shown as 89.2%, and the non-agricultural median across all 106 is 46.66%, shown as 46.7%.
  5. The correlation is a Pearson coefficient across the 106 between the share and the natural logarithm of GDP per capita at PPP (World Bank NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD, 2024). The income thirds cut the 106 at about 11,000 and 30,000 dollars, 35, 35 and 36 countries; each third’s figure is the unweighted mean, or median, of its members. They describe how the shares sit together across countries, not how any country moved. France’s income per person is 5.8 times India’s, 54,799 against 9,416 dollars.
  6. Rounding is done once, at display: India’s share is 87.197%, France’s 3.394%, Niger’s 98.490% and Switzerland’s 1.093%. Nauru’s 93.9% comes from a census and is the one high-income country above 60%; the piece quotes no figure that rests on it.

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