2023 3.602 billion
2022 3.565 billion
2020 3.412 billion*
2010 3.159 billion
2000 2.752 billion
Estimates from ILO, World Employment and Social Outlook 2023; the 2020 total is artificially depressed, down from 3.465 million in 2019 due to temporary Covid-19 pandemic closures.
The International Labour Organization’s 2023 “World Employment and Social Outlook” reports that each day around the world this year, about 3.43 billion workers arrive at offices, labs, fields, home computers, construction sites, schools, restaurants, market stalls and the like. Adding in the 0.21 billion currently unemployed, this makes for a world labor force of 3.60 billion. This total is up by (a) a third from the 2.75 billion of 2000, (b) 300 million from the 3.12 billion workers of 2010, and (c) by 37 million, or 100,000 workers per day, since last year. Divided by region, the ILO finds 2 billion workers in Asia, 650 million in Africa and the Middle East, 300 million in Latin America, and 500 million in North America, Europe, and the Pacific (with the U.S. labor force, as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, at 167 million). A quick snapshot of the working world of 2023 this Labor Day:
Total world labor force, 2023: 3.640 billion
Employed : 3.430 billion
‘Informal’ sector: 2.100 billion
‘Extreme working poverty’*: 214 million
Unemployed: 211 million
* ILO’s definition for extreme working poverty is work at $1.90 per day or less, in constant 2012 dollars
Looking more closely, the ILO’s report suggests three big things about working life: the sharp decline of extreme working poverty; the lag in ‘governance’ and worker protections (though noting better performance in the ‘globalized’ international supply-chain workforce than in purely domestic industries); and the shift of work towards Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East:
1. The recent past and the decline of deep working poverty – The fortunes of the world’s least privileged workers brightened in the last generation. Per ILO’s data, 667 million workers were extremely poor in 2000 – just over a quarter of that year’s 2.58 billion people with jobs – earning less than $1.90 per day in constant dollars. By 2010 this army of destitute labor had shrunk to 406 million, and as of 2022 (the last year for which ILO has an estimate) it was 214 million, or about one-sixteenth of all workers. From 2000 to 2010, the decline in extreme working poverty was concentrated in East Asia and Southeast Asia. These regions have now nearly eradicated deep working poverty, and the sharpest current decline is in South Asia, whose count of working poor has fallen from 131 million in 2010 to 52 million in 2020, and 34 million in 2022. Most of the world’s very poor workers – 152 million, about two-thirds of the total – are in Africa, but here too trends are promising, as the share of African workers in deep poverty has dropped from 57% in 2000 to 44% in 2010, and 35.5% in 2022.
2. The present and the persistence of ‘informality’ – Set against a very positive poverty-reduction story is the big ‘policy and governance’ job that hasn’t been done. This is to provide workers with legal rights and protections. The ILO believes 58% of all workers, or 2 billion people, are working ‘informally’ – that is, in jobs either formally excluded from labor laws or de facto outside the labor-law world. This share has barely changed from the 60% estimate for 2010. By occupation, the highest rates of informality are in farm labor (92% of all workers), domestic service (84%), construction (74%), accommodation and food service (61%) and repair shops (60%); so a less technical picture of the world’s informal work is one of 500 million farmworkers, 61 million maids and nannies, and similar armies of day-laborers at construction sites, cooks and dishwashers working ‘under the table’ in small restaurants, and so on. In legal terms they lack holidays, family leave rights, minimum wages, health and safety inspections, and so on. More practically, they are at higher risk (whether to health and safety, or to secure earnings) than their 1.4 billion formal-sector colleagues, and are a lot poorer, earning by the ILO’s estimate 56% as much as formal-sector workers.
Here Asia’s remarkable achievement record in growth and poverty reduction has a shadow in lack of governance and legal protections: East Asia’s informality rate has dropped only from 55% to 48% since 2010, and Southeast Asia’s from 79% to 70%. In South Asia, the ILO’s estimate of informality has actually risen slightly, from 86.3% to 86.8%, meaning formal legal work in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh remains the province of a small and privileged labor aristocracy. North America (which in ILO regional terms means the U.S. and Canada; Mexico is in ‘Latin America and the Caribbean) has the world’s lowest informality rate at 9% of all workers, and western Europe’s is a bit higher at 13%.
2a. … with a note on ‘globalization’ and supply chains: ILO’s report views economic integration and the development of international supply chains as contributing significantly to the improvement of working life over the last generation, both by providing higher wages and creating an outpost in which ‘informality’ is less common than in purely domestic jobs. Reviewing data for 24 middle-income countries, they conclude that:
“[S]ectors with higher GSC [“global supply-chain”] integration tend to have a larger share of wage and salaries employment, a lower incidence of informality and a lower proportion of low-paid employment – and hence in principle a higher quality of employment.”
This raises an unsettling question about the U.S. government’s approach to international labor issues. U.S. policy focuses intensely on policing supply chains and enforcing labor features of trade agreements. The ILO data, though, suggest that these are already areas where (overall) job quality and pay are well above average. This in turn implies that the U.S.’ work may be missing the areas of greatest current need, and that over-reliance on penalties and sanctions might push poor-country workers into sectors where conditions are generally worse.
3. Towards the future and the geography of job growth: Finally, turning from the past generation and present challenges to look ahead, the ILO’s report answers a simple question – how many jobs? – with a relatively simple answer ‘34 million more than in 2022’. By region, though (and moving a few pieces around to merge the ILO’s “North Africa” region with its “Arab States”, and combining its counts for North America, Europe, and the Pacific), the answers to this question sharply diverge:
Job Growth 2022- 2023
World +34 million
Sub-Saharan Africa +14 million
South Asia +12 million
Southeast Asia +5 million
Arab states +3 million
Latin America and Caribbean +3 million
North America, Europe, Pacific -1 million
East Asia -1 million
Mirroring demography, these figures show labor force growth slowing in Latin America, turning negative in Europe and East Asia (though still growing a bit in North America), still strong in Southeast Asia and rapidly accelerating in Africa and South Asia. Or, more directly, as Africa has been adding 40,000 jobs per day this year and South Asia 33,000, Europe and East Asia have been dropping about 8,500 jobs daily. All suggesting that the center of growth for the next decade’s world economy, and for the urban working world, is shifting away from traditional ‘developed’ countries and Pacific Rim sites, and toward India, Pakistan, the Middle East, and Africa.
The International Labour Organization’s “World Employment and Social Outlook 2023.”
Informality –
And an in-depth ILO look at informal workers and businesses.
And the International Monetary Fund has perspective on informality and economic development.
Perspectives around the world –
PPI’s Taylor Maag on American job quality, and apprenticeships as a way to accelerate blue-collar wage growth.
New Delhi-based Just Jobs Network’s Sabina Dewan on technology, equity, and job quality in South Asia and Southeast Asia (together the sites for half of this year’s new jobs).
Cornell prof./former trade/labor negotiator Desiree Leclercq on trade, labor, and the Biden administration.
Kenya’s Ministry of Labour and Social Protection.
And the U.S. Department of Labor’s International Labor Affairs Bureau.
And perspective –
The Department of Labor’s Labor Day retrospective.
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 Progressive Economy 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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