economy layer
Employment Rate
Share of people aged 15 and older who are employed. Employment includes formal, informal, family, farm, and other qualifying work under the ILO definition. A high employment rate does not necessarily indicate high incomes or good job quality.
Methodology
Values are World Bank World Development Indicators SL.EMP.TOTL.SP.ZS: employment-to-population ratio, population ages 15 and older, both sexes, ILO modelled estimates (ILOEST). The original producer is the International Labour Organization; World Bank WDI is the import and redistribution path. Direct ILOSTAT reuse and the national-estimate code SL.EMP.TOTL.SP.NE.ZS are not used. The figure is the share of all people aged 15 and older who are employed under the ILO short-reference-period definition. At least one hour of work for pay or profit can count as employment; qualifying temporary absence from a job can also count. Informal, family, farm, own-account, and some subsistence work can count under the source methodology. The denominator is everyone aged 15 and older. It is not restricted to ages 15-64, is not the share of the labour force that is employed, and is not calculated as 100 minus unemployment. The indicator does not measure wages, hours, job security, formality, productivity, job quality, or decent work. A high employment rate is not automatically evidence of prosperity. A low rate can reflect education, retirement, discouraged workers, care responsibilities, demographic structure, or labour-market weakness. Values are internationally harmonized modelled estimates. WDI does not provide a usable row-level observed-versus-imputed flag for this series, so the layer is classified as modelled rather than observed labour-force survey results. Source revisions can alter historical values. 2025 is omitted because the January 2026 ILO methodology cycle treats that year as having projection or nowcast character. 2026-2027 projections are not imported. OurBlueDot does not interpolate, fill missing years, carry the last value forward, replace missing values with zero, mix national estimates, use OECD or Eurostat 15-64 values as fills, average sex-specific series, derive values from unemployment, or splice direct ILOSTAT values into this WDI vintage. Country rows are joined by ISO 3166-1 alpha-3; regional and income aggregates are excluded. Territories outside UN-193, including WDI entities PSE and XKX, are not added to the country registry. Map ranks are comparable-sample competition ranks among currently loaded countries (rank 1 is the highest employment-to-population ratio). Ranks compare employment-to-population ratios among countries with a value for the selected year. A higher rank does not mean a better or more prosperous labour market. Missing countries remain without a value.
Coverage & source
- Source
- World Bank World Development Indicators
- License
- CC BY 4.0
- Period
- 2024
- Frequency
- Annual
Rankings, where shown, describe only countries with comparable values in the selected period. A higher rank does not mean a better or more prosperous labour market.