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Data

Unemployment rate: young vs. older adults

ILO
Data sources and processing
Insights about this data
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What you should know about this indicator

  • The unemployment rate measures the share of the that is without a job but actively looking for work and available to start soon. It is one of the most widely used indicators of labor market conditions across countries and over time.
  • When defining the labor force, 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 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 . 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 , 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.

How is this data described by its producer - ILO?

Imputed observations are not based on national data, are subject to high uncertainty and should not be used for country comparisons or rankings. This series is based on the 13th ICLS definitions. The unemployment rate conveys the number of persons who are unemployed as a percent of the labour force (i.e., the employed plus the unemployed). 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. For more information, refer to the ILO Modelled Estimates (ILOEST) database description.

Unemployment rate: young vs. older adults
ILO
Share of the aged 15-24 without work, but actively looking for a job and available to start soon.
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

  • The unemployment rate measures the share of the that is without a job but actively looking for work and available to start soon. It is one of the most widely used indicators of labor market conditions across countries and over time.
  • When defining the labor force, 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 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 . 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 , 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.

How is this data described by its producer - ILO?

Imputed observations are not based on national data, are subject to high uncertainty and should not be used for country comparisons or rankings. This series is based on the 13th ICLS definitions. The unemployment rate conveys the number of persons who are unemployed as a percent of the labour force (i.e., the employed plus the unemployed). 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. For more information, refer to the ILO Modelled Estimates (ILOEST) database description.

Unemployment rate: young vs. older adults
ILO
Share of the aged 15-24 without work, but actively looking for a job and available to start soon.
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

International Labour Organization – ILOSTAT

The ILO’s main online database, ILOSTAT, maintained by the Department of Statistics, is the world’s largest repository of labour market statistics. It covers all countries and regions and a wide range of labour-related topics, including employment, unemployment, wages, working time and labour productivity, to name a few. It includes time series going back as far as 1938; annual, quarterly and monthly labour statistics; country-level, regional and global estimates; and even projections of the main labour market indicators.

Retrieved on
February 11, 2026
Retrieved from
https://ilostat.ilo.org/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
International Labour Organization. (2026). ILO modelled estimates database, ILOSTAT [database]. Available from https://ilostat.ilo.org/data/.

The ILO’s main online database, ILOSTAT, maintained by the Department of Statistics, is the world’s largest repository of labour market statistics. It covers all countries and regions and a wide range of labour-related topics, including employment, unemployment, wages, working time and labour productivity, to name a few. It includes time series going back as far as 1938; annual, quarterly and monthly labour statistics; country-level, regional and global estimates; and even projections of the main labour market indicators.

Retrieved on
February 11, 2026
Retrieved from
https://ilostat.ilo.org/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
International Labour Organization. (2026). ILO modelled estimates database, ILOSTAT [database]. Available from https://ilostat.ilo.org/data/.

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.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

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.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

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: Unemployment rate: young vs. older adults”, 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/unemployment-rate-young-vs-older-adults.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 Data

Full citation

International Labour Organization (2026) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Unemployment rate: young vs. older adults – ILO” [dataset]. International Labour Organization, “ILOSTAT” [original data]. Retrieved March 2, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260302-112310/grapher/unemployment-rate-young-vs-older-adults.html (archived on March 2, 2026).