Study Report - No Cushion to Fall Back on: The Global Economic Crisis and Informal Workers, August 2009
The current global economic crisis has hit the global workforce very hard and few economic actors have been insulated from the shocks. Initially, media and policy attention was confined to analysis of the global financial sector and the macroeconomic situation. Attention has now turned to the impact of the crisis on the real economy in both the developed and developing worlds, and many are concerned that the crisis could gravely afflict emerging markets and developing countries, effectively destroying the economic progress of recent years. The developing world is home to a major proportion of the global poor, for whom the consequences of the crisis could be especially severe, given their slim margins for survival in the best of times. 1 And yet, as the crisis transformed into a recession, and the recession spread across borders, the informal economy has remained largely absent from public and media attention. This is a particularly glaring omission given that a majority of the world’s poor and vulnerable workers rely on the informal economy as a source of employment and income.
