A worker’s status in employment refers to a set of specific characteristics of their job, namely the type of contract under which he or she is employed, the type of economic risk he or she faces in this job (including the attachment between the person and the job), and the type of authority that he or she has over the work establishment and other workers.
Not surprisingly, status in employment is closely linked to the quality of employment. It determines to a great extent the job holder’s working conditions. Many aspects of the working life such as job security, basic remuneration, earnings security, working time, and whether the job is in the formal or informal sector are directly related to workers’ status in employment.
Employees (that is, employed persons holding paid employment jobs) represent the category of status in employment usually associated with more job security, and better working conditions in general, whereas own-account workers and contributing family workers constitute two categories of status in employment regarded as vulnerable employment. Although this is true in general terms, it is necessary to keep in mind that some employees do lack basic elements of decent work (such as not being covered by social security and/or social dialogue) while some own-account workers and contributing family workers are not in a precarious or vulnerable situation. Thus, while the share of own-account workers and contributing family workers is a valuable and reasonable proxy to measure vulnerability, it is nevertheless an imperfect one.
Paid employment jobs (jobs held by employees) particularly continuous and full time paid employment jobs, are known as the standard form of employment, marked by a subordinate and direct relationship between the employer and the employee and the fact that the remuneration is independent from the revenue of the corresponding economic unit. Nevertheless, despite being widely recognized as the norm, little more than half of the employed population around the world hold paid employment jobs (54% of global employment). Employers (self-employed who engage staff on a regular basis) represented 3% of the global workforce in 2017, whereas own-account workers (self-employed without engaging employees) and contributing family workers (self-employed persons working in an establishment operated by a relative of the same household) accounted for 32% and 10%, respectively.. 
In 2017, 61% of the global workforce was male. The shares of male and female workers in global employment were very similar to their respective shares in paid employment and self-employment. This suggests that the worker’s gender does not have an impact on their being in a paid employment or a self-employment job. However, when looking more closely at the various categories making up self-employment, the differences between men and women become far more substantial. Men are over-represented among employers and own-account workers around the world (in 2017, 79% of the world’s employers and 68% of own-account workers were male), while women are over-represented among contributing family workers (in 2017, 63% of the world’s contributing family workers were female). Thus, it appears that men have a higher tendency to work on their own account or with one or a few partners, either engaging staff on a regular basis (employers) or not (own-account workers), whereas women are more likely to work in a business operated by someone else in their household. 
Concerning the prevalence of vulnerable employment, gender does not seem to play a key role at the global level. In fact, in 2017, the global vulnerable employment rate was very similar for men and women (a little less than 43%). This holds true for all regions except for Africa. Whereas in most regions vulnerable employment does not affect one gender more than the other (the female vulnerable employment rate being slightly lower than the male vulnerable employment rate in all regions excluding Africa in 2017), in Africa women appear to be considerably more exposed to vulnerable employment (their vulnerable employment rate was 17 percentage points higher than that of their male counterparts in 2017). 
It is encouraging to see that the share of paid employment in global employment has been steadily increasing since 2001, albeit moderately, while the share of vulnerable employment in global employment has continuously decreased since then. The uninterrupted decline of the vulnerable employment rate is explained by the continued drop in the number of contributing family workers and their corresponding share in global employment. This is a positive development as this category of workers is usually associated with informality and poor working conditions. Even though the number of own-account workers around the world has consistently risen since 2000, the evolution of their share in global employment has not been smooth: it trended downward from the early 2000s to 2015, and since then has been growing. The share of employers in global employment changed only very modestly during the period under review. 
The trends in the number of persons around the world employed in each status in employment category reflect labour market developments. In fact, in the last decade (from 2007 to 2017) the biggest growth is observed for workers in paid employment jobs (employees): their number increased by 19% during this period, while the number of employers and own-account workers rose by 18% and 11% respectively. Conversely, the number of contributing family workers contracted by 16% from 2007 to 2017.
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