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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the occupational status and entrepreneurship research in developing countries by proposing that there are implications for household consumption depending on the occupational status proportion of households. When the occupational proportion of the household changes, household consumption is affected. This effect also changes depending on what quantile level the household is in terms of household consumption.

The paper makes use of OLS and quantile regressions to examine 6,919 households comprising 40,294 individuals from the 2009 Nigerian Living standards measurement survey.

The paper finds that there are implications for household consumption based on the proportion of individuals in each occupational category. The contributions of each employment proportion changes at different quantiles with self-employed individuals increasing household consumption at the lower quantiles but reducing household consumption at the upper quantiles. Crucially, having a higher proportion of unemployed individuals in the household is oftentimes better than having a higher proportion of own account self-employed individuals.

This paper offers new insights into how occupation proportion influences household consumption in developing countries. As a result, the household could seek to organise its members in such a way as to maximise combined household consumption, as diverse occupational statuses contribute differently to the household consumption at different quantile levels. The nature of the data used in this study however does not allow for causality tests.

The proportion of employment statuses in the household has implications for household consumption and so the mix of employment in the household is important. The self-employed could also be involved in activities to enhance household consumption that are not captured by labour income. However, self-employment does not seem to always have a positive effect on household consumption and sometimes unemployment might be better.

The paper provides a new way to view the household as an organising entity in terms of how it can allocate employment proportions to maximise household consumption.

The purpose of this paper is to show that gig jobs could be considered an alternative way, albeit not the very best, to give work opportunities to older people. This could offset the continuously decreasing income from the pay-as-you-go pension system, which remains the main source of income for older Hungarians.

The paper reviews the most important aspects of employment of older people and highlights the digital divide which still restricts their participation in the labor market. The paper analyzes data from the Hungarian carpooling company Oszkár and compares it with official statistical data from the Hungarian labor market, focusing on the dynamics of the employment of older persons.

The findings show that the alienation of older workers from the gig economy is just transitory, and that an increasing proportion of older gig workers can be anticipated.

Compiling data on the gig economy faces a number of obstacles, as enterprises are disincentivized from revealing all their data.

Older people are more likely to be employed in lower-quality jobs, such as own-account self-employed. They are also increasingly more likely to become gig workers.

The paper articulates the importance of remaining active as one ages and moreover challenges the traditional belief that gig jobs mainly offer opportunities to the younger generations.

This study aims to extend the existing body of literature on the individual-level determinants of self-employed persons with (employer entrepreneurs) and without employees (solo self-employed individuals) from the perspective of four post-communist economies (i.e. Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia).

The methodological approach is based on the three harmonised waves (2005, 2010 and 2015) of the European Survey on Working Conditions (EWCS). Multi-variate logistic regression models are used to determine the individual-level differences among employees, solo self-employed individuals and job creators in the selected group of countries.

The results show significant differences among employees, solo self-employed individuals and job creators, especially when it comes to the role of age, gender, education, previous experience, number of working hours and their determination. Job creators in Visegrád countries have, on average, more years of experience, and higher levels of education (tertiary), than wage-employees.

This study provides a series of recommendations for future research on the role of family- and household-related characteristics, entrepreneurship-specific education and migration background.

The previous research on individual determinants of entrepreneurial engagement in Visegrád region was mainly based on the data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. This study offers a novel perspective based on the EWCS data.

In order to explore how informal pedagogical moments are being renegotiated by the technology woven into people's lives, this paper aims to focus on online communities as sites of learning; more specifically, the informal work‐related learning practices of self‐employed workers in these cyberspaces.

This paper draws on the notion of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP) from situated learning theory in order to examine the development of work‐learning practices online. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with own‐account self‐employed workers (contractors and consultants who do not have staff) about their engagement in online communities for work learning.

Findings indicate that these self‐employed workers were learning work practices, the viability of doing particular work, how to participate in online communities for work learning, and how to participate in fluid knowledges. The significance of developing a work‐learning practice is emphasized, as is the impact of multiple and peripheral positionings across on‐ and offline spaces.

Web technologies and shifting configurations of online collectives shake up notions of expertise, beliefs about who is able to produce, and consume information, and where one locates themselves, in order to build work‐learning practices. Multiple positioning across several online communities, and ways of participating that are peripheral, partial and part‐time warrant further examination.

The value of this paper is its exploration of how self‐employed workers develop an online work‐learning practice and the tensions that these practices bring. The paper also attempts to discuss the utility of LPP for contemporary learning practices.

Non‐standard forms of work figure prominently in debates about the flexibility of the labour force. Non‐standard employment, in the form of part‐time jobs, own‐account self‐employment, temporary working and multiple job holding has been increasing in many industrialized countries. Contrasts its prevalence in 1989 in Canada and the UK, through a systematic secondary analysis of the Canadian General Social Survey and the UK Labour Force Survey. While the overall frequency of non‐standard work is the same in the two countries, notable cross‐national differences are observed when age, gender and industry are introduced, and when the different forms of non‐standard work are examined separately. Among the more noteworthy differences is the higher proportion of employed British women in non‐standard jobs.

This paper seeks to explore how workers engage in informal online communities for work‐learning. Although online communities may facilitate learning and knowledge creation, much of the literature is situated in formal online courses, suggesting a need to better understand the nuances of more informal learning spaces online.

Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 11 own‐account self‐employed workers (contractors and consultants who do not have staff).

Participants engaged in ways that fit with expectations, leveraged fluidity, played with boundaries, and meshed with work. These workers attempted to (re)configure online spaces to create the degree of connection and learning needed, although not always successfully. This study explores how participants participated in much less pedagogically inscribed spaces and foregrounds several issues related to online engagement: managing exposure, force‐feeding community, and navigating multi‐purpose spaces.

There are indications that these workers are moving toward more networked architectures of online participation. How the notion of online community continues to evolve warrants further research.

Although turning to an online community is sometimes the only viable learning option, online presence brings challenges to be addressed by practitioners and policy makers, including attending to the nature of relationships in and between different cyberspaces, information and media literacies required, and the implications of such extensive connectivity between people and their web‐technologies.

By exploring how adults reach out to others in “informal” online communities for learning purposes, this paper encourages researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and citizens to consider tensions and questions associated with cyberspace collectives.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the socio-economic characteristics of workers engaged in vulnerable jobs in Mauritius. The study has a particular focus on the gender and youth dimensions of vulnerable employment. The study also provides a pre-crisis and post-crisis analysis of vulnerable employment.

The paper uses several waves of the continuous multi-purpose household survey, which is a high-quality individual-level data set, to study vulnerable employment. Several definitions of vulnerable employment are used to identify the workers employed in vulnerable jobs. These include “own-account” workers and “contributing family workers”.

The results obtained suggest that women and young workers have a lower probability of being in vulnerable employment. Marital status, age and education are also important variables influencing the probability of being in vulnerable employment.

The paper has important policy implications regarding welfare and education policies. Appropriate mechanisms need to be put in place for the social protection and training of workers so that they do not end up in vulnerable jobs.

This paper studies Mauritius as it is a small island economy vulnerable to external shocks. Vulnerable unemployment has often been understudied as the focus of many studies has been solely on employment, and the quality of employment has often not been considered.

The purpose of the paper is to determine whether the Government of Jamaica's COVID-19 Allocation of Resources for Employees (CARE) Stimulus Response program provides a sufficient opportunity for formalization of the informal economy.

A careful examination of the program has been conducted, specifically through reading the CARE brochure, reading the budget presentation by the Minister of Finance in which the program was introduced and details highlighted, following program updates at COVID-19 Press briefings and the Minister's Twitter account, and following related articles and programs via original and social media.

This paper suggests that any capitalizing on the opportunity to promote formalization is insufficient. Early data show increased applications for licenses and registration by informal operators, but the CARE program is only short-term, and the benefits of formalization will have to surpass those of informality to be sufficiently attractive. Other attractors must necessarily involve simplifying the process of contributing to the National Insurance Scheme; and offering unemployment insurance; along with access to finance, education and training and policymaking opportunities. COVID-19 provides the possibility of a “new deal” for the informal economy that could yield productivity gains and more inclusive development.

This is one of the earliest examinations of how the short-term financial support schemes implemented by the GoJ as its COVID-19 Stimulus Response has been used as an incentive to formalize the large informal economy.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new data set of comparable employment indicators for South Asian countries, constructed from more than 60 primary data sources from 2001 to 2017.

The main contribution of the paper is to curate the information provided by individual respondents to censuses and surveys, in a way that is consistent across countries and over time. The usefulness of the data set is illustrated by conducting a rigorous assessment of employment characteristics, of changes in employment over time and of the short- and long-run relationships between economic growth and employment growth in South Asia.

The exercise shows that agriculture still employs the majority of the working-age population across the region and, except in Sri Lanka, more than half of the employment is self-employment or unpaid family work. The paper also shows that employment rates are generally decreasing in South Asia, and that in some countries female employment rates are falling rapidly. Seasonal growth patterns are shown to affect the composition of employment, while non-seasonal changes in short-run growth affect the overall level of employment. The paper estimates that, in the long run, one percentage point growth of gross domestic product has led on average to a 0.34 per cent increase in employment.

This paper provides a new employment data set for South Asia, a rigorous assessment of employment trends and changes and an analysis for relationship between economic growth and employment (both quarterly and long-run).