ZIMBABWE’s informal sector only has 238 000 people formally employed, with the majority in the sector being own employers-cum-employees.
This is contained in the 2019 Labour Force and Child Labour Survey (LFCLS) released by the Zimbabwe National Statistical Agency (ZIMSTAT) this week.
“Paid employees constitute 24.5% amounting to 238 715 workers out of the almost one million people employed in the sector,” the report says.
Out of the 975 880 people in the informal sector, the remaining 69% are own account employers and workers constituting 671 000 people who are involved in survivalist jobs.
The majority of the informal sector employees were married, 17% never married, 10 % divorced and 12% widowed.
The informal sector employed more people with Ordinary Level as their highest qualification while about 2% had attained tertiary education.
However, the latest figures contradict earlier announcements by government officials confirming that 5.7 million people are employed in the informal sector.
Economic expert John Robertson dismissed the ZIMSTAT figures arguing that they do not fit the standard definition of employees.
“The definition does not apply if you are not being paid. An employee is somebody who has got a payslip and can get certain privileges like accessing credit,” he said.
