Page 65 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

Abderrahmane Benouaret: Towards Regulating Freelance Work and the Informal
Economy in Algeria: Will the Self-Employed Contractor Law Suffice?

All they need is a computer or smart phone with internet access, an email for
communication, and an electronic payment tool (Akhmetshin, Kovalenko, Mueller,
Khakimov, Yumashev, & Khairullina, 2018).

This form of employment now represents the largest share of informal labor
worldwide. According to International Labour Organization, self-employed workers
make up 45% of informal employment (figure 1), while wage earners account for
36%. The remaining percentage is attributed to contributing family workers and
employers (Misra, Kumari, & Sajid, 2024).

Figure (01): Composition of informal employment

3% 16% contributing family worker
45% Employees
36%
Self-employment
Employers

Recent statistics show that the number of self-employed workers in the United States
is estimated at 9.832 million people (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2024), and the
number of freelancers is expected to reach around 86.5 million by 2027, representing
50.9% of the U.S. workforce (Statista, 2024).

These new jobs have attracted the attention of many researchers worldwide, and
several studies have attempted to understand the dimensions and new variables
emerging in the labor market. In a bibliometric analysis study by (Sulintanga, 2024)
of scientific research articles in the Scopus database, aimed at understanding trends in
contemporary labor studies, it was found that future business issues received
significant attention with 61,384 articles. These articles were primarily linked to
articles on jobs related to financial technology, totaling 720 articles; online
employment with 1,851 articles; self-employment with 1,583 articles; and online
workers with 921 articles.

All these jobs are often performed in developing countries outside the formal
framework and most of them are low-income. According to (İsmayilov, Almasov &
Mirzayev, 2021), a person’s labor activity cannot be classified as economic if it does
not generate a minimum amount income. Therefore, the activities of self-employed
workers in these countries contribute to raising informal employment rates and
expanding the informal economy. A study by (Misra, Kumari, & Sajid, 2024)
proposed a mathematical model to examine the influence of informal sector jobs on
unemployment trends in developing countries.

65