Statistical Snapshot
Street vendors sell goods and offer services in broadly defined public spaces, including open-air spaces, transport junctions and construction sites. Market traders sell goods or provide services in stalls or built markets on publicly or privately owned land (WIEGO Statistical Brief 8).
Street vendors are a large and very visible workforce in cities, yet it is difficult to accurately estimate their numbers (see Challenges of Obtaining Statistics on Street Vendors). The WIEGO Statistics Programme publishes data based on official statistics on both street vendors and market traders. In 2012, WIEGO published data on street trade in 11 cities in 10 countries (WIEGO Working Paper no.9). Street vendors and market traders are two of the worker groups in the more recent WIEGO Statistical Brief series on informal workers. The briefs present statistics on the numbers, the working arrangements and the characteristics of these two groups based on official statistics at the national, urban and city levels.
Street vendors and market traders are a significant proportion of the urban labour force in developing countries.
Ghana (2015): 39 per cent of women and 10 per cent of men employed in urban Ghana are market traders; 5 per cent of women and 1 per cent of men are street vendors. Together, street vendors and market traders are 29 per cent of total urban employment (WIEGO Statistical Brief no.21).
8 Major South African Metro Areas (2018): 3 per cent of women and 2 per cent of men employed in these metro areas are street vendors; one per cent of both women and men are market traders. Together they comprise 2 per cent of employment in the areas (WIEGO Statistical Brief no.19).
India (2017/18): 3 per cent of women and 5 per cent of men in urban employment are street vendors and market traders comprising 4 per cent of total urban employment (WIEGO Statistical Brief no.24); (2018/19): 4 per cent of women and 2 per cent of men in urban employment are street vendor and market traders, comprising around 4 per cent of total urban employment (see tables under ‘Additional Data for India’ here).
Thailand (2017): 4 per cent of women and 3 per cent of men in urban employment are market traders; 3 per cent of women and 2 per cent of men in urban employment are street vendors, comprising 6 per cent of total urban employment (WIEGO Statistical Brief no.20).
Mexico (2019): 3 per cent of women and 2 per cent of men in urban employment are market traders; 4 per cent of women and 3 per cent of men are street vendors. Together both comprise 6 per cent of urban employment (WIEGO Statistical Brief no.22).
Peru (2015): 10 per cent of women in non-agricultural employment in urban Peru (outside of Lima) and 4 per cent of men are street vendors; 6 per cent of women and 2 per cent of men are market traders. Together the groups jointly comprise 11 per cent of non-agricultural urban employment outside of Lima (WIEGO Statistical Brief no.16).
Street Vending, Market Trade and Gender
The statistics above indicate that street and market trade are generally greater sources of employment for women than for men. Further, a higher share of women than men sell food and other perishable goods (Roever 2014; WIEGO Statistical Brief no.16), which are more likely than other goods to spoil or to be confiscated. Research also shows that women street vendors typically earn less than men—and, in many countries, less than half as much as men (Chen and Snodgrass 2001; WIEGO Statistical Brief no.16). The difference in earnings is not entirely explained by women working fewer hours than men. The Peru study found that although women market traders and street vendors worked fewer hours than men, the net hourly earnings of women were less than men’s for market traders and for street vendors in urban areas (other than Lima). Only women street vendors in Lima had slightly higher net hourly earnings than men (WIEGO Statistical Brief no.16).
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