The study investigated the psycho-social profile of informal workers that advertised their services through radio and newspaper announcements in the city of Salvador, Bahia. There were 638 ads registered during the 5 months of data collection, distributed in 19 areas of activity. The objective of the study was obtaining information about their reasons to get into the informal activity, time in operation, etc. Telephone interviews with 73 of the advertisers were conducted. The age of the interviewees was between 30 and 39 years, they had completed high school, and had a monthly remuneration between 240 and 479 reais (approximately US $85-170 at the time of this writing), and worked in the informal sector for less than 3 years. Thematic content analysis and quantitative procedures, such as chi-square and Homals, were the procedures of analysis employed. The first result was that the main work areas of the informal workers were: food services, multi-functionality and information technology. Another important result was the interaction (chi-squared) between the motives of satisfaction, dissatisfaction and barriers, on the one hand, and age, level of education and time operating in the informal market, on the other, revealed statistical significance in three cases: (1) dissatisfaction and age group, (2) satisfaction motives and level of education, and (3) satisfaction motives and time of work in the informal market.
informal work; psycho-social profile of the worker; informal market
