The easiest definition of the informal economy is based on a description of the location within which actors operate. Four categories of actors are identified:

• Home based workers¹  

  • Dependent home-base workers have the following characteristics: 

    • they work at home outside the establishment that buys their products; 

    • they agree by prior arrangement to supply goods or services to a particular enterprise; 

    • their remuneration consists of the prices paid for their products 

    • they do not employ workers on a regular basis. 

  • Independent home-based workers are those who work in their home and deliver their products or services to any prospective buyer. Their characteristics are those of the self-employed and are classified as part of the group "own-account workers".

• Street traders and street vendors

• Itinerant or seasonal or temporary job workers on building sites or road works

• Those in between the streets and home, e.g., waste collectors

A more complicated definition is defined by the XVth International Conference of Labor Statisticians.

• The informal sector comprises units in the household sector, as defined by the System of National Accounts (SNA), and which, are unincorporated enterprises or do not hold a complete set of accounts, including:

• units -- registered or not -- without permanent employees,

• units with permanent employees and which are, alternatively simultaneously unregistered units, or units which do not register their permanent employees, or units which employ, on a continuous basis, less than a given number of persons, according to the legislative codes (fiscal or social) or to the practices of survey statisticians when they design the scope and coverage of enterprises surveys.

• As broadly defined, the international concept distinguishes between two sub-categories of informal sector units:

• "family enterprises" comprised of independent or own-account owners, family workers, apprentices and casual workers, and with no permanent employees; and

• "micro-enterprises" comprised of units with less than 5 to 10 employees (or jobs), or which do not register them, or which are not registered as enterprises.²