informal jobs display lower earnings quality higher insecurity and lower quality of the working environment as captured by a higher incidence of long hours accordingly the chapter examines workers transitions into and out of informality this analysis which helps to clarify the role of informal jobs in social mobility and potential persistent effects on workers careers is limited to four countries for which the necessary data are available urban china urban colombia south africa and hirkey this finding casts doubt on the hypothesis that informality constitutes a reliable stepping stone towards better jobs this suggests some workers may become trapped in a vicious circle cycling between informal jobs and nonstandard lowerquality formal jobs