All the public sector establishments and those private sector establishments which employ 10 hired workers or more are called formal sector establishments and those who work in such establishments are formal sector workers. All other enterprises and workers working in those enterprises form the informal sector. 

Thus, informal sector includes millions of farmers, agricultural labourers, owners of small enterprises and people working in those enterprises as also the self-employed who do not have any hired workers. 

There are several benefits enjoyed by the workers in the formal sector. 

Some of them are : 

• Those who are working in the formal sector enjoy social security benefits. 
• They earn more than those in the informal sector.
• Developmental planning envisaged that as the economy grows, more and more workers would become formal sector workers and the proportion of workers engaged in the informal sector would dwindle.

 We learn that there are about 400 million workers in the country. There are about 28 million workers in the formal sector. That is only about seven per cent (28/400 × 100). Thus, the rest 93 per cent are in the informal sector. Out of 28 million formal sector workers, only 4.8 million, that is, only 17 percent (4.8/28 × 100) are women. 

In the informal sector, male workers account for69 per cent of the workforce Since the late 1970s, many developing countries, including India, started paying attention to enterprises and workers in the informal sector as employment in the formal sector is not growing.

Workers and enterprises in the informal sector do not get regular income; they do not have any protection or regulation from the government. Workers are dismissed without any compensation. Technology used in the informal sector enterprises is outdated; they also do not maintain any accounts. Workers of this sector live in slums and are squatters.