Prostitutes earnings to count as GDP?

How much do prostitutes actually earn? The Spanish national statistics institute (INE) has been demanding the various national brothel-keepers’ organisations the almost impossible task of assessing the contribution that prostitution makes to the National GDP. 

A spokesman for the association of clubs de alterne (alternate clubs, as brothels are known in Spain), expressed his shock when the INE phoned his office asking for financial data, wanting to find answers to questions such as; how many prostitutes were needed for a club to be viable (50), the average charge per service (40-70 euros) or how many clients each sex worker saw each day (four to eight).

The latest year for which estimates are available was in 2009, where the office for National Statistics estimated that the contribution made to national output by sex workers in UK was 5.3 billion pounds, or 0.4% of the GDP. 

In a government survey of the same year in Spain, 39% of the Spanish men said they had paid for sex. Inevitably, there are few reliable statistics, as estimates put the numbers of sex workers in Spain at 300,000, or five times as many as are estimated in the UK.

But as there is no census of prostitutes, nor clubs, nor the number or cost of services, it is impossible to calculate the reality of this case.