Page 69 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

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

To achieve this, a variety of data sources were used as per the study’s requirements,
as follows:
− Informal economy indicators in Algeria as a percentage of GDP were extracted
from the informal economy database of the World Bank Group. The estimates
were based on the Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes (MIMIC) approach for
the period from 1993 to 2020.

− Self-employment rates in Algeria were derived from International Labour
Organization model estimates database, which the World Bank is licensed to
use. The study compared self-employment rates in Algeria to overall
employment rates from 1993 to 2020 to align with the available informal
economy data.

It is worth noting that the self-employed workers included in the study are defined by
International Labour Organization as workers who are self-employed or work with a
single partner, a small number of partners, or in cooperatives. It classifies them into
four sub-categories: (World Bank, 2024a)
− Employers
− Own-account workers
− Members of producers' cooperatives
− Contributing family workers

To calculate and interpret the bivariate correlation between informal economy
indicators and self-employment in Algeria, Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used
by putting the information into version 29 of the Statistical Package for the Social
Sciences (SPSS).

Regarding the data related to the independent labor market in Algeria, a random
sample of freelance job postings was selected from six national and international
freelance platforms. These platforms include Freehali (www.freehali.com) and DZ
FreeWork (www.freeworkdz.com), which are the two most prominent freelance
platforms in Algeria, as well as two Arabic platforms, Ureed (www.ureed.com) and
Tasmmeeme (www.tasmeeme.com), specialized in design and graphics. Additionally,
two well-known global platforms were included: Freelancer (www.freelancer.com)
and Upwork (www.upwork.com).

A comprehensive survey of freelance job postings for Algerians on these platforms
was conducted as of August 17, 2024. The sample consisted of 17,350 freelance job
postings, with activities and skills listed on these platforms grouped into seven
homogeneous categories. The results are presented in table (02) as follows:

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