
In the business sector, a large number of employees are still reported as being employed without pay, risking that in the future they will be left without a pension and be a burden for the rest of society that pays insurance.
The final data on enterprises in 2022 show that in the business sector, over 90,000 people were reported to be employed without pay. They constituted over 16.5% of the total number of employees of 519 thousand people, INSTAT reported.
More detailed data show that the trade and vehicle repair sector has the highest percentage of unpaid workers.
Retail trade is the largest employer in the business sector with a total of 73 thousand employees in 2022, but about 27 thousand of them or 38% of the total employees in this sector are unpaid. These represent the self-employed in family businesses, who are officially reported as unpaid workers.
After retail trade and auto repair, real estate activities reported having 30% of non-wage workers.
The real estate activity has been involved in rapid developments in recent years, but it does not have an essential role in the labor market. In 2022, there were 3442 total employees in these activities, where 30% of them were no longer paid.
Furthermore, restaurants, the transport sector, professional services and travel agencies have unpaid employees with over 25 percent of the total number of employees in these activities.
Labor market experts and reports of the International Labor Organization classify unpaid work in family business as informality and creating conditions for a social scourge in the future.
More recent INSTAT data refer to unpaid employment in family business expanding much more than paid employment.
According to the estimates of the labor force survey for 2022, it results that for the age group of 15 years and older, 47.0% of employees are employed with a salary, 31.5% are self-employed (employer or self-employed without employees others) and 21.5% are unpaid workers in the family business.