FACT: The world child labor count has gone down by more than 100 million since 2000.

THE NUMBERS: Child labor by year, worldwide* –

* International Labour Organization estimates, from surveys done 2001-2025.

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

The American mental image of child labor emerges from early 20th-century social reform: Progressive Era photographs of wan children in coal mines and textile mills; factory-focused state government programs in the 1910s; national laws drawn up by Frances Perkins’ Department of Labor in the 1930s. For those looking abroad, the emphasis has been similar: factories, physical goods, supply chains, and children. International Labour Organization research, though, suggests that this is a relatively small share of modern-day child labor. Their most recent worldwide estimate, released on June 11, finds child labor mainly rural, concentrated in very poor countries, and steadily falling, especially in Asia.

As a point of departure, the ILO defines “child labor” as follows:

“[W]ork that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children [aged 5 to 17]; and/or interferes with their schooling by: depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; obliging them to leave school prematurely; or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.”

ILO statisticians have been publishing periodic in-depth analyses of child labor every four years or so since 2002. Their reports include worldwide estimates; the regions in which child labor is most common and those in which it is rarest; change over time; and the “economic sectors” in which most child and teenager laborers work.

Their first report, for the year 2000, found 245.5 million boys and girls (one in six of that year’s 1.53 billion children) doing some form of child labor. The most recent, out in June, estimated 138 million child laborers among 1.90 billion children. Accepting some margin of error, the ILO surveys thus show the worldwide child rate falling by half in a generation — from 16.0% to 7.8% of all boys and girls — and the actual number of child laborers down by 108 million.  Three basic points from these reports, then a thought on the American role:

1. Child labor rates closely track poverty rates. The world’s 26 poorest countries, with about 8% of the world population, are home to 42% of all child laborers: 57.7 million, one in four (23.5%) of these countries’ 245 million children. Child labor rates in high-income countries — the United States and Canada, western Europe, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand — average 0.7%, with a total of 1.6 million child laborers. In between these poles, rates are 3.6% in upper-middle-income countries and 7.5% in lower-middle-income countries.

2. Child labor is mostly rural. The 2025 report finds 61% of child laborers — about 84 million boys and girls — in agriculture, mostly in small family farms and enterprises.  This is often hazardous: per the ILO, child labor in agriculture often involves “exposure to sharp tools (machetes) and dangerous machinery (tractors), risk of snakebites and injuries from other animals, exposure to extreme environmental conditions, and exposure to agrochemicals including inorganic fertilizers and pesticides.” Another 27% of child laborers, 37 million, are in simple urban services such as house-cleaning, food delivery, and shops. The remaining 13%, or 18 million, are in “industry” — that is, on construction sites, in mines, and in factories. Industry work, then, is a relatively small share of all child labor, but appears especially dangerous: 60% of “industry” child labor (meaning 11 million children) is in ‘hazardous’ work, as opposed to 30% in agriculture and 48% in services.

3. Child labor has fallen fastest in Asia. Since the ILO’s first report a quarter-century ago, Asia-Pacific countries — economically growing fast, and demographically rapidly urbanizing — have cut child labor counts from 127 million to 27 million, and to a “rate” of 3.1%. The data:

In Latin America and the Caribbean likewise, the ILO’s estimates of child labor have dropped from 17.4 million in 2000 to 7.4 million in 2024, though the ‘rate’ is somewhat higher than Asia’s at 5.5%. (Or, adding the U.S., Canada, and Greenland to get the “western hemisphere,” 3.9%, which still leaves Asia’s child labor rate the world’s lowest.)  The Arab world and the ILO’s “Europe and Central Asia” region are at 5.8% and 5.6%. Child labor is now concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa (relatively more ‘rural’ than other regions, and with 20 of the world’s 25 ‘low-income countries’). which is home to 87 million child laborers or nearly two-thirds of the worldwide total. Africa’s pattern of child labor mirrors the worldwide “sectoral” pattern, except more intensely: 70% of African child workers are on farms, and only 8% in “industry.”

How to respond? In principle, ILO’s data suggests that urbanization, economic development, and some focused government policies, have sharply reduced child labor over the last generation, especially in Asia; and that child labor is least common, but especially dangerous, in ‘industry’.  With this as the backdrop, U.S. policies, usually focused on child labor in industry (or manufacturing specifically, or international “supply chains”) rather than in agriculture and services, can be criticized as targeting a relatively small part of the child labor phenomenon, but also defended as focused on especially high-risk work.

Debating whether this is still the right approach would be interesting. But unfortunately such an argument would likely miss the point, since current policies suggest that the U.S. won’t be much involved at all in next-generation efforts to reduce child labor.

The Trump administration’s rejection of open-market trade policies, and its attempt to abolish almost all development aid, mean that for the next three years (barring some very sharp turnaround), the U.S. will contribute little to the larger economic trends reducing child labor worldwide. More targeted American work on the most dangerous and worst forms of child labor may also be ending. Having stopped all Labor Department child labor and forced labor projects this spring, the administration hopes to abolish the $91 million U.S. contribution to the ILO, cut its International Labor Affairs Bureau — the group which handles these issues — by 40% (from $113.1 million to $70.2 million, and from 138 to 112 people), and shift ILAB’s remaining work away from humanitarian projects to “ensuring that American workers and businesses benefit from the Administration’s trade agenda by counteracting labor practices overseas that undermine American competitiveness.”

So, a sad U.S. note set against a picture of steady and impressive progress over the past generation. Americans can do better than this.

FURTHER READING

The ILO’s June 2025 report on worldwide child labor.

More from ILO:

Archives: The ILO reports from 2001, 2006, 2010, 2013, 2017, and 2021.

Lessons from reducing child labor through education policies in low-income countries.

And a look at child labor in agriculture.

U.S. policy now:

The Trump administration proposes cutting ILAB by 40% and “refocusing” its work on trade competition. (See under “Departmental Management”, on page 21).

… and to cut U.S. contributions to the International Labor Organization from $91 million to zero (pg. 96).

Not over yet: House Democrats hope to protect ILAB work.

U.S. policy then:

Child labor reports from the Labor Department’s International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB):  https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/resources/reports/child-labor

President Clinton oversees the 1999 negotiation and ratification of the ILO Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labor.

From the Biden/Harris administration, then-Secretary of Labor Martin Walsh at the ILO’s 2021 conference.

… and Tom Vilsack’s USDA on addressing rural child labor at home.

And the long look back:

The National Archives reprints Lewis Hine’s classic photographs of child labor in early 20th-century American streets, mines, and factories.

Smithsonian Magazine looks back on Frances Perkins.

And Economic History has data on the decline of child labor in the U.S. after the passage of state child labor laws in the 1910s and the national Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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FACT: Tariffs are taxes paid by Americans.

THE NUMBERS: U.S. GDP growth –

* International Monetary Fund projection, April 2025
** 2021-2024 growth rates from BEA

WHAT THEY MEAN: 

Mr. Trump’s April 2 tariff decree, claiming a “national emergency” related to trade balances, imposed (a) a 10% tariff on almost all the coffee, TV sets, automobile parts, shirts, and other things American buy from abroad, and (b) higher rates up to 50% on things from 57 specific trading partners, from Bosnia and Jordan to the European Union.  Following a bond-market rout on April 9, the administration “suspended” these latter rates for 90 days — i.e., today — in the hopes of making “deals”. Monday’s extension of this deadline to August 1st for at least some countries comes with renewed threats, similar though not always identical to those of April 2. (They range from 25% to 40% this time, and cover 14 countries: Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Tunisia, South Africa, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Thailand, Serbia, Bosnia, etc.).  These may all be struck down in a few weeks, as on July 31 the Court of Appeals will hear arguments on the May 28 lower-court opinion declaring the entire April 2 decree, and therefore anything using it as a base, illegal. If that doesn’t happen, here’s a look at the likely impacts, through the lens of a “deal”  the administration announced (perhaps prematurely) last Thursday:

Big picture first: Last April, the International Monetary Fund cut its U.S. growth estimate by nearly a point, from a 2.7% guess in mid-January to 1.8%. (In dollars, this means about $200 billion less U.S. output, with an original $730 billion in growth falling to $535 billion.) Excluding the -2.2% contraction in the pandemic year 2020 as an anomaly, a 1.8% growth year would be the U.S.’s lowest in 15 years. Or, more recently, it’s a point below the 2022-2024 average.  The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, which does the U.S. government’s GDP-estimating, reports a -0.5% contraction in this year’s first quarter, so the IMF seems on track or even a bit optimistic.

Trade “deals” and anti-growth: The administration’s description, posted last Thursday, of a ‘trade deal’ with Vietnam — as of this morning, the only one reported so far among countries targeted in the April 2 decree — helps explain the impact of trade policy on these forecasts:

“Vietnam will pay the United States a 20% tariff on any and all goods sent into our territory, and a 40% tariff on any transshipping. In return, Vietnam will do something that they have never done before, give the United States of America total access to their markets for trade. In other words, they will ‘open their markets to the United States,’ meaning that, we will be able to sell our product into Vietnam at zero tariff.”

The first two sentences aren’t true. “Vietnam” won’t pay anything, and its government made much larger “access” offers to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the 2010s.  This “deal’s” nature and lifespan (even if the Court of Appeals doesn’t scrap it next month) are likewise uncertain, as neither the White House nor the U.S. Trade Representative Office has posted any actual text. But assuming that at least the “20%” (cut back from a 48% April 2 rate) and “40%” figures are correct, and that it isn’t swiftly terminated, here’s the likely impact of “deals” of this sort.

1. Vietnam won’t pay any of this. Americans buy about $130 billion worth of goods from Vietnam each year, mainly consumer goods found in retail stores and groceries: TV sets, laptops, and smartphones; shoes and clothes; furniture; seafood, coffee, canned tropical vegetables, and so on. Imposing a 20% tariff on them does not mean that “Vietnam” as a country, or the Vietnamese government, or Vietnam-based companies, will pay anything.  The ones who pay are the buyers — American retailers, food wholesalers, grocery stores, and so on  — who will write checks to CBP for 20% of their cargoes’ value when furniture and clothes dock at Long Beach, or laptops and coffee arrive on the incoming tide at New Orleans.

2. You will pay. The buyers’ tariff payment, in turn, is included in the bill you pay in the store. This is because these buyers add it to the bills they’ve paid to their Vietnamese supplier and to the shipping company carrying across the Pacific to the United States. The result is the “landed cost” from which they mark up to cover costs — wages, building rent, transport, maintenance, marketing, etc. — and leave a profit margin. If the product doesn’t sell, the store takes the loss; if you buy it, you cover their tariff cost. Using the hypothetical example of a container carrying 1,000 Vietnamese-made wooden chairs valued at $100 each, here’s the arithmetic:

Notes: The average import value of a wooden Vietnamese chair last year was $106; the table uses $100 for simplicity.  The $5000 payment to the shipper is based on typical current container rates for a Ho Chi Minh City-to-Los Angeles transit. The markup is purely hypothetical; real-world markups vary by company and product. State sales taxes range from 0% to 7.25%, the 5% is a rough average.

So the administration’s “deal” here is for you to pay $42 more for a chair.  Fundamentally, you’re out $42, the federal government gets $20 in tariff money, and your state government gets $2 in sales tax.  The remaining $20 mostly evaporates as “deadweight loss.” Looking back to the IMF’s forecasts, and scaling this up for U.S. trade in general:

Family price impacts: Spread across the country and all consumer goods, retailers will lose some business as they try to sell higher-priced chairs; buyers such as yourself will pay more; and the country will lose some GDP as more twenties vanish around the country.

Producer impacts: Where most Vietnamese imports are “consumer” goods like the chairs, shoes, and TV sets, Canada’s product mix is heavy on energy, fertilizer, and natural resources. The EU’s tilts toward medicines, cars, chemicals, and industrial inputs.  Retailers, groceries, and restaurants do buy a lot of Canadian and European goods, and with higher tariffs, they’d pay more and charge more. But the impact of tariffs on Canadian and European goods — that’s fully a third of all U.S. goods imports last year — will fall relatively harder on American manufacturers, farmers, hospitals, and building contractors. Facing higher costs, these businesses would lose some competitiveness vis-à-vis imports and especially as exporters. Their higher production costs, meanwhile, would raise inflationary pressure on the “producer price” side and give Federal Reserve economists some extra reason to avoid interest rate cuts.

So: as the IMF’s forecasts and the BEA’s reporting to date both suggest, the likely effect of “deals” like this one will be somewhat lower living standards and a drop in growth rates.

FURTHER READING

PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:

• Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
• Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards;
• Stand by America’s neighbors and allies;
• Offer a positive alternative.

PPI’s Ed Gresser testifies on tariffs at the Joint Economic Committee, December 2024; PDF version here.

Macro background:

The IMF’s April World Economic Outlook update.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis’ most recent GDP report shows a drop of 0.5% in January-March 2025.

Legal outlook:

The White House’s April 2 tariff decree.

The Court of International Trade’s unanimous May 28 opinion ruling it unconstitutional.

… our look at the C.I.T. decision.

Next up, with oral argument coming July 31, the Court of Appeals brief from the Liberty Justice Center.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

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