LABOUR NON-DECLARATION AS A FACTOR OF THE POPULATION LIVING STANDARDS: CONSEQUENCES, REGULATION MECHANISMS
Authors: Bogush Larysa 
Published: January 2025

The purpose of the article is to study the consequences of the employment and labour non-declaration for the population standards of living and working potential reproduction, as well as to substantiate systemic approaches to regulating and preventing the totality of the undeclared labour negative impacts in Ukraine. The undeclared labour is the labour activities carried out on a basis of agreements between a worker and an employer, which are usually concluded without taking into account the current legislatively approved standards for the working hours’ duration, volumes, productivity, and payment for the labour, and generally do not provide for reliable fiscal reporting on the volumes of performed labour and achieved work results (quantitative, financial). Functioning in the formal and shadow employment, the undeclared work has a clear systemic negative impact on the filling of state and local budgets, mandatory state insurance funds (in particular, pension), implementing state goals and mechanisms for socio-economic development, observance of socio-labour rights, social protection of workers and the entire population. On the other hand, working unofficially, colluding with the employer to conceal the legal labour volume and results completely or partially, not declaring the income from entrepreneurship or self-employment, a person increases the amount of available working and living capital, savings and accumulations, improves his life level and standards. The research methodology is based on the generalization, comparison, analysis of factors, manifestations and consequences of the undeclared work for the reproduction and improvement of the population labour potential and employment sphere, as well as on the synthesis of obtained results into approaches for optimizing national policy and practices of tracking and preventing these violations of legislatively approved socio-labour relations. The complexity of undeclared labour as a socio-economic phenomenon of the modern globalized world and as the employment model of the population significant share with a large number of features and factors determines the leading criterion for forming and implementing the effective policies to regulate it. The essence of this criterion is to balance the economy-wide, sectoral and industry-specific, inspection and supervising, as well as preventive measures with the involvement of authorized structures for regulating and monitoring socio-labour relations, the employment sphere and labour market, law enforcement bodies, civil society institutions (including those for trilateral cooperation). Given the trends and features of the undeclared labour in Ukraine, its regulation policy should focus primarily on the mechanisms and levers for identifying and restraining this employment model with a consecutive increase in the share of systemic measures for preventing the undeclared labour and its transforming into the official employment. The main guideline of the fair labour declaration policy is the simultaneous reduction of the undeclared labour advantages for both employers and workers (employees, self-employed).