BANGKOK, 25 January 2019 – The ASEAN Secretariat, International Labour Organization (ILO), and ILO’s International Training Centre (ITC) jointly hosted ASEAN-ILO course on the employment transition analysis on 22-25 January in Bangkok.

The course aimed to strengthen capacity of ASEAN Member States in measuring, understanding and analysing informal employment statistics, and in understanding multi-faceted dimensions of informal employment and its transition to formal employment.

Officials from labour ministries, national statistical agencies, trade unions and employers’ associations from ASEAN Member States attended the course. They learned and discussed about conceptual framework on informality, statistics on informal employment, measures to formalise informal sector and informal employment. Other topics included extension of social security coverage to workers in informal employment, formal employment creation, and social dialogue mechanism to promote formal employment.

The training course was convened to support the on-going Regional Study on Informal Employment Statistics to Support Decent Work Promotion in ASEAN. The study is one of 15 initiatives to implement the Vientiane Declaration on Transition from Informal Employment to Formal Employment towards Decent Work Promotion adopted by ASEAN leaders in 2016. Available statistics on informal employment in ASEAN Member States will be assessed with the aim to identify the strength and gaps in data collection and analysis and recommend approaches to improve translation of statistics into evidence-based policies.

Informal employment represents a predominant group of workforce around the world. ILO estimated around 2 billion or 60% of the world’s employed population earn their living in the informal economy. In Southeast Asian region alone, around 78% of total workers, especially the young ones, are informally employed and they often experience decent work deficit due to lacking access to labour protection, social security and employment benefits.

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