The economy after dark

At around six every evening, a car park on the edge of a Saigon neighbourhood changes character. Within an hour, the empty asphalt fills with folding tables, gas burners and rails of second-hand clothes. By eight, thousands of people are wandering between stalls selling grilled squid, phone cases and sugar-cane juice. By midnight it has all vanished, leaving little behind but a few paper napkins. Ms Thu, who has sold fried spring rolls here for six years, can set up her stall in fifteen minutes. "No contract, no boss, no office," she says. "No sick pay either."

Markets like this are the most visible corner of what economists call the informal economy: work that happens outside official contracts, licences and tax records. Its scale is easy to underestimate. By most estimates, more than half of Vietnam's workers earn their living informally, as street vendors, motorbike taxi drivers, home-based tailors or day labourers on building sites. Far from being a sideline, this work feeds office staff at lunchtime, keeps small shops supplied and gives migrants from the countryside a first foothold in the city.

For the people doing it, the attractions are obvious. A stall needs almost no paperwork and very little capital, and the hours can be fitted around children, classes or a second job. For many women, that flexibility is what makes paid work possible at all. The same informality leaves people exposed. Few informal workers have health insurance or a pension, and a single illness, a fine or a stolen cart can wipe out months of savings. Ms Thu lost three weeks of income last year when she broke her wrist.

City authorities tend to regard the sector with mixed feelings. It absorbs workers whom factories and offices cannot employ, but it pays little tax and often spreads across pavements that are supposed to be clear for pedestrians. Campaigns to "reclaim the pavement", such as a well-publicised one in the city centre in 2017, tend to follow the same pattern. Vendors disappear for a few weeks and drift back once the inspectors have moved on. "You can clear a pavement in a morning," an economist who studies informal work in the city told me. "You can't clear away the reasons people are standing on it."

Some cities in the region have tried a middle path, setting aside hours and places where vending is allowed in exchange for basic hygiene rules and a small fee. Vietnam already offers voluntary social insurance, but relatively few informal workers have signed up, and many find the payments hard to keep up on an income that changes from week to week. A simpler, cheaper scheme could give vendors a safety net without forcing them into a system built for salaried staff. Ms Thu says she would join if the payments could rise and fall with her takings. Until then, her savings stay in a biscuit tin under the counter.