Based upon my information, there is nothing informal about many of these jobs from the employees’ perspective. They are hired, given work schedules, take orders from supervisors, etc. just like a “formal” job, with the sole difference that their employers don’t pay the mandatory payroll taxes on their behalf. (In some instances, the employers deduct the employees’ portion of the tax and pocket it.) There’s not much “informal” about systematic business crime like this, as neither is it limited fruit sellers and mom and pop tiendas. I know of a chain store that operates this way.

Not long ago La Nación reported that appoximately 40% of employees in CR hold jobs in which their employers violate the labor law, usually by failing to pay the social security tax though also by doing things like paying below the minimum wage, requiring overtime, not providing breaks, etc. To refer to these kinds of illegal and exploitative employment practices as the “informal economy” is to rename crime with a euphemism.

Yes, there is a real informal economy in CR, but conflating it with illegal and exploitative business practices just confuses the issues. The one refers to usually poor people scrambling to make a buck without a job; the other to sometimes quite affluent businesspeople violating the labor law in a way that steals money from their own employees.