Unemployment

1. the absolute size of the unemployed population and its sub-groups in absolute figures;
2. the unemployment 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 unemployed comprise all persons of working age who were: a) without work during the reference period, i.e. were not in paid employment or self-employment; b) currently available for work, i.e. were available for paid employment or self-employment during the reference period; and c) seeking work, i.e. had taken specific steps in a specified recent period to seek paid employment or self-employment. Future starters, that is, persons who did not look for work but have a future labour market stake (made arrangements for a future job start) are also counted as unemployed, as are participants in skills training or retraining schemes within employment promotion programmes, who on that basis, were “not in employment”, not “currently available” and did not “seek employment” because they had a job offer to start within a short subsequent period generally not greater than three months. The unemployed also include persons “not in employment” who carried out activities to migrate abroad in order to work for pay or profit but who were still waiting for the opportunity to leave.

The unemployment rate is the number of persons who are unemployed as a percent of the total number of employed and unemployed persons (i.e., the labour force), 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) “Unemployment by sex and age -- ILO modelled estimates, Nov. 2020 (thousands) | Annual”, table code “UNE_2UNE_SEX_AGE_NB_A”;

(2) “Unemployment rate by sex and age -- ILO modelled estimates, Nov. 2020 (%) | Annual”, table code “UNE_2EAP_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.