000 employed in commercial agriculture which seems very unlikely. Accordingly, the best estimate for 2004 is formal sector employment of around 950 000, implying a loss of some 400 000 jobs at the minimum since the downturn started. Job losses have been ongoing during the first half of 2005, suggesting that formal employment today is in the region of 900 000. The Informal Economy In 2002, the World Bank estimated that the informal sector constituted 40% on average of the Sub-Saharan economy, but was much higher in three countries – Zimbabwe (59%), Tanzania and Nigeria (about 58%). It also estimated the size of the informal economy at that time at US$1.9 billion, which economists have suggested in on the high side. GDP today in Zimbabwe is estimated at Z$40 trillion (US$4 billion at the auction rate). Assuming that 40% of GDP is in the informal sector, which is probably a realistic number, the informal sector would be in the region of US$1.6 billion. Total population is currently estimated at 11.5 million. Roughly half are of working age, but after adjustment for economically-inactive people – house minders, etc - the workforce is estimated at 5 million. Of those approximately 900 000 are employed in the formal sector, and a further 1.1 million in small-scale agriculture, much of which is really underemployment. This leaves a total of 3 million, or 60% of the workforce, that is either wholly unemployed, or employed in informal sector activities. With the loss of some 500 000 jobs since 1998, it is a reasonable estimate to suggest that the informal sector accounts for about half of the total “unemployed”, or 1.5 million people. Just what proportion of these informal sector people have now lost their livelihood is impossible to say. Evidence from Harare alone suggests that by far the majority of informal sector people have been put out of work. A conservative estimate would then be that, countrywide, some 750 000 people have lost their livelihoods in the last month. As the operation continues into rural areas and small towns, so that number will rise and the number of people employed in small-scale agriculture, or providing services to small-scale agriculture, will fall. On a very conservative estimate, then, the operation will have put 1 million people and their dependants out of work and on to the streets in the main urban areas. In smaller towns, and in rural areas, the number could be anywhere from 300 000 to 500 000, If one assumes that half of this 1.5 million were working in the informal sector, then it can be concluded that 750 000 people have become totally unemployed as a direct result of Operation Murambatsvina. If one accepts that about half of the informal sector – say US$1 billion out of a total sector (including small-scale farming) of $1.9 billion –has lost its livelihood, then the direct impact on GDP would be a reduction of some 25%. This may be too large a number, and a more conservative estimate would put the direct impact at between 15% and 20% of GDP, or around US $700 million (Z$7 trillion).