Total: | 27.6 million |
Sex work | 6.3 million |
“Industry”* | 6.3 million |
Services | 5.5 million |
Governments: | 3.9 million |
Agriculture | 2.1 million |
Domestic service | 1.4 million |
Other: | 1.9 million |
* Includes construction, manufacturing, mining and quarrying, and utilities.
From the International Labour Organization, two reports describe the shadow-world economy of forced labor:
The first Global Estimates of Modern Slavery Forced Labour and Forced Marriage, released in 2022, develops a human picture by estimating the scale of forced labor in the world, describing the various forms it can take, and providing details by industry, age, gender, and other characteristics. The core number: in 2021, 27.6 million of the world’s 3.4 billion workers — 0.8%, just under one in a hundred — were in various forms of “forced labour,” defined as “work that is both involuntary and under penalty or menace of a penalty (coercion)”. The most common form, representing 36% of the 27.6 million workers — 9.9 million people — involves workers trapped in jobs by withholding pay. Others include debt bondage, threat of violence by criminal gangs (often in sex work), and in 1% of cases chattel slavery.
By industry, the ILO estimates 3.9 million people in state-driven forced labor programs, and 6.3 million in forced sex work, including 4.9 million women and girls and 1.4 million men and boys (or, alternatively, 4.6 million adults and 1.7 million children). Another 6.3 million are in private-sector “industrial” work; 5.5 million in services; 2.1 million in agriculture; 1.4 million in domestic service such as maid and nanny work; and 1.9 million in other fields. By region, 55% of the total — 15.1 million people — were in Asia/Pacific countries, a figure slightly below Asia’s 59% share of the world workforce; the highest forced labor rate, proportional to workforce, was in the Middle East, and the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa. ILO also finds cross-border migrant workers at especially high risk, making make up 15% of the 27.6 million — 4.1 million people — but only 5% of the total world workforce. The report does not speculate on how much-forced labor goods production enters international trade flows. It notes, though, that forced labor rates appear “highest in severity and scale” in “informal micro- and small enterprises operating at the lower links of supply chains in high-risk sectors and locations,” and that with respect to trade destined for wealthier countries, forced labor is likely most common in “raw materials production in the lower tiers of supply chains of consumer goods.”
The second report, “Profits and Poverty: The Economics of Forced Labour,” came out this past March and adds financial numbers. Two large ones stand out:
1. A quarter trillion dollars in profits: According to this report, forced labor enterprises generated $236 billion in profits worldwide. To put this in perspective, the IMF estimates the world’s 2021 GDP at $97 trillion, and McKinsey consultants have guessed that corporate profits in general have been about 8% to 10% of world GDP over the last decade. With the caution that GDP estimates in general are blurry and estimates of the size of criminal enterprises especially so, these figures suggest that forced-labor profits amount to about 2% of about $10 trillion in total business profits, and about 0.2% of world GDP. Looked at from a different angle, in 2021 the world’s most profitable company (Saudi Aramco), reported $110 billion in profit.
2. Three-quarters of forced-labor profit comes from forced sex work: The ILO believes about $173 billion of this $236 billion in profit — essentially three-quarters of the total — comes from forced sex work. (Again, the 6.3 million people in forced sex work are about a quarter of the world’s forced labor victims.) The remaining $64 billion includes $35 billion from industry, $20.9 billion from services, $5 billion from agriculture, and $2 billion from domestic service. The report also provides a ‘profit per victim’ range, illustrating the especially high profits drawn from victims of forced sex work: $27,252 for forced sex work, $4,944 in industry, $3,407 in services, $2,113 in agriculture, and $1,570 from domestic service. ILO suggests that the very high extraction of profits from forced sex work reflects the fact that “in most cases people in forced commercial sexual exploitation are paid very little or nothing at all,” are particularly likely to be held in debt bondage, and typically have “limited or no access to justice.”
The ILO’s 2022 look at the human world of forced labor (as of 2021), with totals by region, industry, and explanations of different varieties of abuse.
And follows up this March with an investigation of profits.
Policy:
The ILO reports illustrate a world. How might governments and observers respond? With many different varieties of forced labor, responses vary but include a mix of police work and courts, media and public exposure, diplomacy, Customs enforcement, and other options. Two contemporary cases — the eradication of government-sponsored forced labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry over the 2010s, and the Biden administration’s more recent work to eliminate forced labor from Malaysian rubber-glove production, offer some insights on successful approaches.
Uzbek cotton:
Put briefly, Uzbekistan’s cotton industry is a large part of the national economy, accounting for about 20% of Uzbekistan’s export earnings. For the first 25 years of its post-Soviet history, the Uzbek government required residents of cotton-growing districts to participate in autumn cotton harvesting. As such, it was a state-led forced labor program rather than a collection of small-scale private enterprises the ILO report suggests account for most world forced labor. Over the 2010s, a combination of international pressure and internal reform led the Uzbek government to abolish this system and convert cotton harvesting to paid work. Core factors in this reform include:
(a) A fifteen-year international activist effort through the “Cotton Campaign” involving businesses, labor unions, and human rights groups, to bring attention to forced labor in the cotton industry and discourage purchases of Uzbekistan cotton.
(b) International government pressures, in the U.S. case including regular human rights reports published by the State and Labor Departments, and a “review,” entailing possible cancellation, of the tariff waivers Uzbekistan received through the Generalized System of Preferences.
(c) Contingent factors, in particular, the death in office of post-Soviet leader Islam Karimov and his replacement by a new leader, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, whose government hoped to repair the reputational damage associated with forced labor and put sustained effort, with ILO advice and monitoring, into reshaping the cotton industry.
A March 2022 ILO report announcing an end to “systemic forced labour and child labour” in Uzbek cotton harvesting.
The Cotton Campaign lifts its boycott of Uzbek cotton, March 2022.
And via the Uzbekistan Embassy in D.C., remarks from Tanila Narbaeva (Chair of National Commission on Combatting Human Trafficking and Forced Labor) on the abolition of forced labor and next steps in labor reform.
Rubber gloves:
A more recent Biden administration program — the investigation of rubber gloves produced by six Malaysian companies from 2019 through 2021, and remediation afterward — addresses a situation closer to those the ILO reports are most common. The line workers in these glove factories are mostly migrants from other countries; U.S. Customs and Border Protection investigators in 2021 found credible evidence of unfree recruitment, debt bondage, confiscation of passports, and other abuses. CBP accordingly prohibited imports from these companies and their subsidiaries through a “Withhold Release Order”. Following this, a program of consultation and reform, including through the Malaysian government, the ILO, and the companies, enabled CBP to find that many of the companies had remediated the conditions and reopen trade. A chronology:
The Department of Labor reviews Customs and Border Protection’s initial Withhold Release Order, July 2020 through September 2021.
CBP’s “Withhold Release Order” banning imports, November 2021.
ILO’s report on Malaysian rubber glove manufacturing and options.
… and an ILO progress report from 2023.
CBP reopens trade, April 2023.
And lists current “Withhold Release Orders”.
And two more general perspectives on U.S. policy:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection explains forced labor-product interdiction.
The Department of Labor’s International Labor Affairs Bureau on its child labor and forced labor programs.
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.