In spite of a growing body of literature on quasi-formal employment in the European Union (EU), there is still limited knowledge regarding the exact functioning of this illegal employment scheme. To fill this gap, we report data from the 2019 Special Eurobarometer on undeclared work, which reveals that 30.1% of European workers have higher income from employment than reported to tax authorities. Explicitly, 2.6% of registered dependent employees are entitled to cash top-ups to the official wage, for 7.8% of them the amount of supplementary payments depends on the work efforts, whereas 9.2% receive informal remuneration under multiple arrangements. In addition to these ‘regular recipients’, we also found that 10.5% of employees in the EU can be classified as ‘sporadic quasi-formal workers’. Besides showing that wage underreporting is far more pervasive than previously assumed, the study also offers a more nuanced insight into different manifestations of this illicit practice in the EU. Results of a two-level random intercept multinomial logit model reveal that women are less likely to receive fixed and variable cash-in-hand payments, whereas older individuals have a lower propensity to receive work-time-related income. The analysis also highlights that professionals, service sector employees, manual job workers and individuals whose jobs require travelling are more prone to variable wages compared to the rest of the population. Given a modest success in combating the phenomenon to this date, these findings will be particularly valuable for policymakers in their endeavours to devise tailored policy measures.

JEL Codes: E26, H26

尽管关于欧盟（EU）准正式就业的文献越来越多，但关于这种非法就业计划的确切运作的知识仍然有限。为了填补这一空白，我们报告了 2019 年特别欧洲晴雨表关于未申报工作的数据，该数据显示，30.1% 的欧洲工人的就业收入高于向税务机关报告的收入。明确地，2.6% 的注册受抚养雇员有权获得官方工资的现金补足，其中 7.8% 的补充支付金额取决于工作努力，而 9.2% 的人在多种安排下获得非正式薪酬。除了这些“常规受助者”，我们还发现欧盟 10.5% 的员工可以归类为“零星准正式员工”。除了表明工资少报比以前假设的更为普遍外，该研究还提供了对欧盟这种非法做法的不同表现形式的更细致入微的洞察。两级随机截距多项式 logit 模型的结果表明，女性不太可能收到固定和可变的手头现金付款，而老年人获得与工作时间相关的收入的倾向较低。该分析还强调，与其他人群相比，专业人士、服务业员工、体力劳动者和工作需要出差的个人更容易出现工资波动。鉴于迄今为止在打击这一现象方面取得了一定的成功，这些发现对于政策制定者制定量身定制的政策措施特别有价值。

JEL 代码： E26、H26