International Labor Organization estimates of child labor worldwide
2020 160.0 million
2016 151.6 million
2012 168.0 million
2008 215.2 million
2004 222.3 million
2000 245.5 million
Every four years since 2001, the venerable International Labour Organization has published an estimate of child labor* numbers and rates around the world. The first edition, looking at the world of 2000, found 245.5 million of the world’s 1.53 billion children in child labor. The most recent, out in June 2021, reported 160 million child laborers in a slightly larger population of 1.67 billion children. That is, over 20 years the actual number of child laborers fell by 35%, and the share of the world’s children in child labor dropped from 16% percent to 9.6%.
The 2021 report, though, also found something surprising and distressing. Between 2016 and 2000 —for the first time in the series — the ILO’s count of working children rose. The estimate for 2016 had been 151.6 million boys and girls in child labor; thus the 2020 report’s 160 million (a pre-COVID number) meant about 8.4 million more. Equally striking and perhaps even more discouraging, almost all of this rise in child labor was among younger children aged 5-12.
What has happened? Three closer looks at the 2020 findings suggest a pattern, and perhaps part of a response:
1. Child labor is mostly rural: The American mental image of child labor draws much from America’s 20th-century activism and legislative reforms: Progressive-Era photographs of wan children in coal mines and textile mills; factory-focused state laws and a temporarily successful national law in the 1910s; the Fair Labor Standards Act drawn up by Frances Perkins’ Department of Labor in the 1930s. Child labor today, however, is mainly agricultural work. The ILO’s report finds 70% of child labor — about 112 million of the world’s 160 million working boys and girls — in rural areas, principally in small family-run farms and enterprises. Another 20%, or 32 million children, are in low-level urban services. “Industry,” which in ILO usage includes construction sites, mines, and factories, accounts for 10.3% or 16 million child workers, and a smaller 6% of child labor among young children aged 5-11.
2. Child labor is mostly family-based: 72% of child laborers are in “family work” as of 2020. This is a much higher share than the 63% the ILO reported for 2016. Employment of child labor in private companies, meanwhile, has dropped from 31.9% in 2016 to 17.3% in 2020.
3. Child labor is growing regionally concentrated: On close reading, the ILO’s 2021 data do not really show a worldwide upward turn, but regional trends that have begun to diverge. In Asia, in the Western Hemisphere, and in rich countries, child labor counts and rates continue to fall; taken together, the child labor count in these regions fell from 82.5 million in 2016 to 58.6 million in 2020.** Counts rose, however, in sub-Saharan Africa and also in the Middle East, and the ILO’s “Europe and Central Asia” region. In pure numbers, most of the growth came in sub-Saharan Africa, where the ILO’s count rose from 70 million in 2016 to 86.6 million — now more than half the world total — in 2020, and from 6.7 million to 10.7 million in the Middle East and Europe/Central Asia.
How might policies, both within countries and internationally, respond? African patterns of child labor mirror the world pattern, except more intensely: 82% of African child labor is in rural areas and in agriculture (with 5.3% in “industry”), and likewise 82% of African children involved work in family enterprises and farms rather than for companies or in itinerant “odd job” work. With this in the background, laws and enforcement programs along the lines of the 20th century U.S. experience are important. But the core challenge appears to be finding ways to ensure that parents have the financial ability and incentives to keep children in school. Here Latin American experience may offer a model: In the 1990s and 2000s, Brazil and Mexico were able to drive down child labor rates more rapidly than development alone could do, by providing small stipends to families certifying their children were in school for regular hours.
* Covering children from the ages of 5 to 17. “Child labor” is defined as meaning any work for children aged 5 to 14, and work above 14 hours per week for children aged 15 to 17.
** Breaking this out by region, child labor in Asia has dropped from 113 million in 2008 to 70 million in 2016, and 49 million in 2020; in Latin America and the Caribbean, from 14 million to 10.5 million and 8.0 million; in high-income countries, from an estimated 2 million in 2016 to 1.6 million in 2020.) From 2016 to 2020, child labor counts rose from 1.2 million to 2.4 million in Arab states, and from 5.5 million to 8.3 million in Europe and Central Asia.
The ILO’s June 2021 report on worldwide child labor counts and trends in 2020.
Policy
The Department of Labor’s International Labor Affairs Bureau looks at child labor rates and policy around the world.
… and Labor Secretary Martin Walsh outlines U.S. policy to the ILO’s 2021 conference on child labor.
The ILO on lessons from reducing child labor through education policies in low-income countries.
And the Inter-American Development Bank reviews Brazil’s “Bolsa Familia” program, credited with sharply reducing child labor and infant mortality rates in the 1990s and 2000s.
And the American experience
The National Archives reprints Lewis Hine’s classic photographs of child labor in early 20th-century American streets, mines, and factories.
BLS recounts the development of U.S. child labor law, from a Connecticut statute in 1913 through the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
… and the Government Accountability Office, in 2018, looks at physical risks and child labor enforcement for America’s contemporary working children (including in legally permissible summer jobs, family farm work, and so forth as well as illegal “child labor”). In the 2010s, about 700 Labor Department investigations each year found child labor law violations. These were most common in “leisure and hospitality,” but that may reflect more frequent investigations in these industries, as opposed to higher rates of child labor. GAO does not venture a guess at the scale of child labor in the U.S., but does conclude that “since 2011, data indicate that the number of children working is increasing.”
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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