designed to be nationally representative, and in the latest round covered 34 countries, with a target number of interviews of 1,500 per country.<sup>8</sup> The European Social Survey (ESS) collects information on social conditions, attitudes, and values and behavior. It is a cross-national survey of 36 European countries and is conducted by the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) which is an independent legal entity that represents national governments. The survey is regularly undertaken every two years and Russia participated in survey rounds 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2016. The sample is designed to be nationally representative of all people aged 15 and over, and uses random probability sampling and a minimum target sample size of 1,500. This data were previously used to study informality in the EU in (Packard, 2012).<sup>9</sup> Next, we identify the questions and the various definitions of informal employment that can be derived from each survey. The main questionnaire of the RLMS allows for the identification of two groups as informally employed: i) workers who are employed at an enterprise without a contract; and ii) workers employed at an entity with no more than one employee. For reasons that will become clearer later, we call these two groups type-1 and type-2 informals (or more colloquially salaried and self-employed, respectively). Workers with a secondary job and individuals that engage in irregular economic activities are not included in this study.<sup>10</sup> Similar measures have been used by Russian and international researchers such as (Lukiyanova, 2015); (Slonimczyk & Gimpelson, 2013); (Lehmann, Razzolini, & Zaiceva, 2009). In 2009, a special supplemental module was conducted within RLMS which asked additional questions on oral contractual agreements, employer’s social security contribution, whether business is registered, and whether labor laws and work agreements are respected. While very useful, the supplementary data are outdated at this point and unfortunately, no follow-up has been conducted since.

Using the LFS, informal workers can be identified as follows: i) workers working but not at an enterprise; ii) workers without a written contract; and iii) self-employed without registration. The official Rosstat definition of informally employed uses the first criterion, with the difference being that it includes workers’ primary as well as secondary jobs. We define a broader measure that applies all three criteria but only to the primary job (henceforth referred to as “LFS (broad)”). While these differences yield slightly different estimates in levels of informal employment (in fact,

> 8 - The Life in Transition Survey data and documentation are publicly available on line at: <u>https://www.ebrd.com/what we-do/economic-research-and-data/data/lits.html</u> 9 The European Social Survey data and documentation are publicly available at: <u>https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/data/round-index.html</u> 10 Those with a secondary job, by definition have a primary job, so we assume that the main characteristics of their employment are defined by the primary job. There is an important share of workers who have no primary job but do have an irregular job (around 9 percent for the period 2010-2016),  but we decided not to include these because of two reasons: first, irregular workers’ attachment to the labor market is not very clear and, second, several questions about welfare and other job characteristics - necessary for the <u>analyses done in the rest of the paper- are not included for this group in the RLMS.</u>

9/67 Informal Employment and Worker’s Wellbeing in Russia