Are Workers Compensated for Accepting Vulnerable Jobs? Evidence from West Africa

Bocquier, Philippe [UCL] Nordman, Christophe Jalil [Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)] Vescovo, Aude [Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)]

Develops indicators of employment vulnerability in seven West African economic capitals and studies their links with individual earnings from the main job. Vulnerability in employment (contractual insecurity, working conditions, underemployment, and stopgap jobs mismatched with individual characteristics) is a dominant characteristic of urban labor markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. Indicators of employment vulnerability in the seven West African cities of Abidjan, Bamako, Cotonou, Dakar, Lome, Niamey, and Ouagadougou reveal that in the private sector, 83 percent of dependent workers and 86 percent of independent workers are vulnerable. These percentages mask huge differences between the formal and informal private sectors, where 98 percent of dependent and 87 percent of independent workers are vulnerable. Among workers in the private sector, 85 percent meet at least one criterion for vulnerability. For average levels of vulnerability, compensating wage differentials are found at the upper end of the distribution, but the compensating mechanism does not concern the poorest workers.