What if there is no law? The figures on informality and noncompliance with the law
One of the main political agendas of any government—especially those from countries on the periphery of the world (or the so-called “Global South”)—is employment. The employment rate serves as a kind of thermometer that measures the health of a country’s labour market and economy. A high rate of unemployment triggers an alarm, as it points to a decrease in household income, a rise in poverty, and, naturally, growing difficulties in accessing consumer goods and basic services essential for dignified living conditions. Ultimately, it affects the very capacity for survival.
It is no coincidence that the current Brazilian government has been celebrating the successive falls in the unemployment rate over recent years (see here and here), especially when compared to the previous administration. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), an official government agency, reported at the end of last year an employment rate of 59% (for the trimester Sept./Oct./Nov. 2025), the highest in the historical series since 2012. This percentage corresponds to just over 103 million people. Another record was also broken last year: the lowest unemployment rate in the historical series, 5.2%, that is, nearly 5.6 million people.
Amidst these effusive figures, however, there is a statistic that should alarm jurists and socio-legal scholars alike: informality has also been operating at persistently highest levels. In 2024, a record was broken with the highest number of informally employed people since 2016 (when this specific data series was created), namely 40 million people. In relation to the number of employed individuals, this represents a rate of 38.9%, a figure that has remained historically stable regardless of the government in office. Throughout 2025, although the number slightly decreased, over 38 million people were working under conditions of informality. These data point to a phenomenon that extends beyond purely economic or social dimensions. Informality—however it is conceptually framed—fundamentally involves, as Feige (2015, p. 5) observed, “activities of individuals, households and/or firms that evade, avoid, circumvent, elude, are excluded from, or not subject to the rules and conventions of established institutions.” It therefore also reflects the level of noncompliance with legal norms. When nearly half of a country’s economically active population is engaged in activities that violate legal rules, a crucial question emerges: where is the law? How does the legal system—including its actors and organisations—operate in a context where norms are, to a high degree, pervasively and frequently violated?
While Brazil provides a salient case study, the problem is far from nationally confined. Informality is not an exotic or isolated phenomenon characteristic of developing economies alone, but a reality across most of the globe. According to the International Labour Organization, “more than half of the global labour force and more than 90% of Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) worldwide” operate within the informal economy. In this light, scholars have begun to refer to a “new normal” (Jütting and Laglesia 2009, Stuart, Samman and Hunt 2018, Charmes 2020), but which is characterised by widespread and structural noncompliance.
Despite the extensive literature on informality produced over the last 50 years—from macroeconomic statistics to ground-level qualitative approaches—, socio-legal studies have lagged behind in addressing the problem, which presents a pressing empirical and theoretical challenge: to rethink how law functions—or fails to function—when large portions of the population live and work not outside of formal legal systems, but in breach of them. Elsewhere (Moita 2023), I took initial steps in this endeavour by examining the Brazilian case and one of the most conspicuous informal activities: street vending. Looking at the impacts of what I termed “structural noncompliance” (pp. 95 ff.) on the legal system, one deserves particular attention: where the law operates amid high degrees of noncompliance, both private actors and state authorities resort to bartering agreements to achieve some level of compliance, but which in turn generate new opportunities for noncompliance. The chief consequence of this spiralling effect is the loss of bindingness of political power conveyed by legislation, resulting in a privatisation of public law whereby compliance standards are defined not by lawmakers, but by enforcement agencies and individuals directly affected. Whether these conclusions can be generalised can only be determined through further socio-legal research supported by empirical evidence.
About the Author
Edvaldo Moita
Professor of Law, University of Brasília
PhD in Sociology at Bielefeld University and in Law at the University of Brasília. President of the Brazilian Association of Researchers of Sociology of Law (ABraSD) and Editor-in-Chief of the Brazilian Journal of Sociology of Law (RBSD).