Data
Share of workers who are employees vs. GDP per capita
ILO
What you should know about this indicator
- Employment refers to people who worked for at least an hour during the reference period (typically a week), whether in paid employment or self-employment.
- Employees are defined as workers in paid employment jobs. Paid employment refers to all jobs where people hold an employment contract which gives them remuneration not dependent upon the revenue of the organization for which they work. This status in employment is provided according to the International Standard Classification of Status in Employment (ICSE-93).
- In some countries, self-employed workers who operate incorporated businesses are counted as employees, which can limit the comparability of self-employment estimates across countries.
- When defining the working-age population, the definition of “working age” varies across countries, depending on national laws and practices. In the ILO modeled estimates shown here, this is harmonized to refer to people aged 15 and older.
- This data comes from the ILO Modelled Estimates series. The The International Labour Organization (ILO) combines countries' own reported estimates with statistically modeled estimates when observations are missing. This improves comparability across countries and over time and allows the ILO to calculate regional and global aggregates for every year. You can read more about how the ILO produces these estimates in the Modelled Estimates documentation.
- This data follows the standards of the 13th International Classification of Labour Statisticians (ICLS). Under this framework, employment includes work for pay or profit, including self-employment, as well as the production of goods for own use (such as subsistence farming). Changes in the definition of employment also affect who is counted as unemployed or outside the labor force. Because definitions were updated under the 19th ICLS, data using the newer definitions is not fully comparable with data based on the 13th ICLS. You can read more about the definitions in this explainer by the ILO.
Share of workers who are employees vs. GDP per capita
ILO
Share of people in employment working as employees, as a percentage of total employment.
Source
International Labour Organization (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
February 3, 2026
Next expected update
February 2027
Date range
1991–2024
Unit
%
What you should know about this indicator
- Employment refers to people who worked for at least an hour during the reference period (typically a week), whether in paid employment or self-employment.
- Employees are defined as workers in paid employment jobs. Paid employment refers to all jobs where people hold an employment contract which gives them remuneration not dependent upon the revenue of the organization for which they work. This status in employment is provided according to the International Standard Classification of Status in Employment (ICSE-93).
- In some countries, self-employed workers who operate incorporated businesses are counted as employees, which can limit the comparability of self-employment estimates across countries.
- When defining the working-age population, the definition of “working age” varies across countries, depending on national laws and practices. In the ILO modeled estimates shown here, this is harmonized to refer to people aged 15 and older.
- This data comes from the ILO Modelled Estimates series. The The International Labour Organization (ILO) combines countries' own reported estimates with statistically modeled estimates when observations are missing. This improves comparability across countries and over time and allows the ILO to calculate regional and global aggregates for every year. You can read more about how the ILO produces these estimates in the Modelled Estimates documentation.
- This data follows the standards of the 13th International Classification of Labour Statisticians (ICLS). Under this framework, employment includes work for pay or profit, including self-employment, as well as the production of goods for own use (such as subsistence farming). Changes in the definition of employment also affect who is counted as unemployed or outside the labor force. Because definitions were updated under the 19th ICLS, data using the newer definitions is not fully comparable with data based on the 13th ICLS. You can read more about the definitions in this explainer by the ILO.
Share of workers who are employees vs. GDP per capita
ILO
Share of people in employment working as employees, as a percentage of total employment.
Source
International Labour Organization (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
February 3, 2026
Next expected update
February 2027
Date range
1991–2024
Unit
%
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
We calculated this indicator by dividing the number of people in a specific employment status by the total number of employed people, then multiplying by 100 to express it as a percentage.
We excluded projections from the ILO Modelled Estimates (ILOEST) series. These projections are indicated by the absence of an observation status (obs_status) across all countries in a given year."
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Share of workers who are employees vs. GDP per capita”, part of the following publication: Bertha Rohenkohl, Pablo Arriagada, and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (2026) - “Work and Employment”. Data adapted from International Labour Organization. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260302-112310/grapher/share-of-workers-who-are-employees-vs-gdp-per-capita.html [online resource] (archived on March 2, 2026).How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
International Labour Organization (2026) – with major processing by Our World in DataFull citation
International Labour Organization (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Share of workers who are employees vs. GDP per capita – ILO” [dataset]. International Labour Organization, “ILOSTAT” [original data]. Retrieved March 2, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260302-112310/grapher/share-of-workers-who-are-employees-vs-gdp-per-capita.html (archived on March 2, 2026).