Over 2 billion workers globally are informal — what should we do about it?

In informal wage employment, workers may have better paid jobs with some de facto benefits, though not the same security of tenure and social security benefits as formal wage workers. Other informal workers have poorly paid jobs in manual work, such as on farms and construction sites. In the latter case, informal employment is a last resort job to avoid unemployment. A more accurate characterization of informal labour markets in developing countries is as two-tiered, with informal workers either being in ‘lower-tier’ or ‘upper-tier’ self/wage employment.

Climbing the job ladder - Creating opportunity and mobility

It is critical for policy makers to understand that the informal economy is not monolithic and account for its heterogeneity. While the goal of reducing informality is a desirable objective, it is also important to find ways to move workers right at the bottom of the heap  —the lower-tier informal workers— to the upper tier of the informal labour market. Lower-tier informal workers are the most vulnerable and make up the majority of the working poor. 

https://www.wider.unu.edu/publication/over-2-billion-workers-globally-are-informal-%E2%80%94-what-should-we-do-about-it

Citation: Institute or the United Nations University