Employment

1. the absolute size of the employed population and its sub-groups in absolute figures;
2. the employment rate of the population and its sub-groups.

For further information about definitions and sources and methodology please see below at the end of the page.

Please make use of the interactive filtering options to highlight data by country, years, age groups, and gender.

Definitions

The employed comprise all persons of working age who, during a specified brief period, were in one of the following categories: a) paid employment (whether at work or with a job but not at work); or b) self-employment (whether at work or with an enterprise but not at work).

The employment rate (employment-to-population ratio) expresses the number of persons who are employed as a percent of the total working age population, or its sub-group as defined, for example, by age and/or sex.

For more information, refer to the ILO concepts and definitions page.

Sources and methodology

The data for the charts below is sourced from these data tables:

(1) “Employment by sex and age -- ILO modelled estimates, Nov. 2020 (thousands) | Annual”, table code “EMP_2EMP_SEX_AGE_NB_A”;

(2) “Employment-to-population ratio by sex and age -- ILO modelled estimates, Nov. 2020 (%) | Annual”, table code “EMP_2WAP_SEX_AGE_RT_A”.

The data can be accessed here: https://ilostat.ilo.org/data/.

Warning about data quality: some of the data may be based on imputed observations. Imputed observations are not based on national data, are subject to high uncertainty and should not be used for country comparisons or rankings. For more information about the estimation and, where relevant, projection methodology, please refer to the ILOSTAT page on modelled estimates and projections.