Middle class and informality: winners and losers in a process of re-salarization of the labor market

• In Event: Desafios del Crimen Organizado en América Latina

Abstract

In the last decade, the proportion of Latin American workers who contribute to social security in their jobs has grown, by far surpassing the levels reached 25 years ago. This recovery, however, has not benefited all workers in the same way: coverage has grown among men, urban, mid-high income salaried workers; while changes among low income, non-salaried, women, and rural workers have been much weaker. Beyond these stylized facts, there exist scarce knowledge regarding how the growth and fall of informality has occurred. Furthermore, it remains unclear how these changes have combined with another important transformation that occurred during the last decade in several Latin America countries: the expansion and consolidation of a new middle class. This paper analyzes the evolution of informality in Uruguay since 1990 and how this relates to the evolution of the country’s social class structure. Using household surveys the analysis focuses on how informality is distributed within the middle class and across different occupational categories, productive sectors, as well as across different types of workers. We aim to identify winners and losers in this inverted u-shaped process of the evolution of informality. At the same time, by reconstructing work trajectories of the middle class through in depth interviews of more than 100 individuals, we offer innovative evidence of how these changes have affected different kinds of jobs and sectors. As such, we explore the meanings and symbolic implications of the growth and fall of informality in the Uruguayan middle class.

Authors

• Juan A Bogliaccini, Universidad Católica del Uruguay

• Rosario Queirolo, Universidad Católica del Uruguay