to better understand the characteristics of Haiti’s labor markets from the household and individual perspective, a current gap in the literature.

This paper has two main sections. First, it provides an overview of labor market development in Haiti during the last decade thanks to an unprecedented harmonization of three different surveys, including the latest 2012 ECVMAS household survey. This first section presents the main trends in employment and participation in Haiti and explores more in-depth the characteristics of non-farm jobs in Haiti. In the paper’s second part, the analysis focuses on the determinants of labor income in the country.

## **Box 1: Of data and surveys in Haiti**

This paper relies on data from three surveys conducted in Haiti between 2001 and 2012: the 2001 _Enquête des Conditions de Vie des Menages (ECVH),_ or Survey on Households’ Living Conditions; the 2007 _Enquête sur L`Emploi et l`Economie Informelle (EEEI),_ or Survey on Employment and Informal Economy; and the most recent _Enquête sur les conditions de Vie des Ménages Aprés Seisme (ECVMAS),_ or Survey on Households’ Living Conditions after the Earthquake.

The 2001 ECVH is a household survey covering 7,186 households and including modules on health, mortality, migration, education, labor, and income. ECVH income data have been previously used to estimate poverty rates in Haiti (Sletten and Egset, 2004) and are, to some degree, comparable to ECVMAS’ income data. The 2007 EEEI is a labor survey comprising 6,620 households with some information at the household level and more detailed data on labor relations, as well as labor and nonlabor income. Finally, the 2012 ECVMAS is a household survey including both income and expenditure information for 4,930 households, detailed data at the household and individual level, and a labor module that encompasses separate sections on agriculture and non-agriculture enterprises for company owners and self-employed workers.

It should be noted that the three surveys do not use an exactly similar questionnaire, and therefore are not perfectly comparable. Annex 1 discusses the harmonization effort undertaken to render the interest variables as comparable as possible.

# **I. Overview of Haiti’s Labor Market Trends from 2001 to 2012**

As of 2012, Haiti’s population was estimated at 10.8 million people,<sup>4</sup> 7 million of whom were of working age (Figure 1). Among those, 74 percent were active in the labor market, meaning that they were either employed or willing to start a job on short notice if offered one.<sup>5</sup> Two-thirds of the 1.4 million people defined as unemployed were discouraged by the tough labor conditions and were not actually searching for work, while the remaining 0.5 million were actively looking. Unemployment as defined by the International Labour Organization, which considers only people looking for a job, stood at 12 percent, high for Latin America, but in line with other countries in the Caribbean.

> 4 Haiti’s last Census dates to 2003. Total population for 2012 refers to estimates from the 2012 household survey, based on projections by Haiti’s statistical office, the _Institut Haitien de Statistiques et Informatique_ (IHSI).

> 5 This number refers to an extended definition of unemployment, which considers not only those currently looking for a job (the ILO’s definition), but also those who are not looking due to discouragement by labor market conditions but who would be willing to take a job if offered one. For more details on definitions used in this paper, see Box 2.

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