Does Jobless Mean Workless? Unemployment and Informal Work

Abstract

The spate of interest in informal work in recent years may be related to the hope that such work provides a safety net or survival strategy for those who would otherwise be seriously disadvantaged. Closer examination of this notion requires the disaggregation of informal work into its different forms and also the disaggregation of the unemployed into distinctive categories. The so-called new unemployed people, produced by the economic circumstances of the last decade, have no tradition of working informally to get by. Indeed, most evidence suggests that those in employment are best placed to do other forms of work as well. A detailed sociological study of the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, England, illustrates both divisions in participation in forms of work between men and women and also a process of polarization between work-rich households, with multiple earners engaging in all forms of work, and work-poor households, typically headed by elderly people, single parents, or unemployed people. The social polarization is likely to increase. The article concludes that jobless indeed means workless.