Fight Against Child Labor Progresses Again

A report released yesterday by UNICEF and the International Labor Organization shows that after some steps back, the global fight against child labor is once again progressing. The organizations warn, however, that at the current pace, eliminating child labor in the world by 2030, like stipulated by the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, would require progress to be 11 times as quick. Even if it went 4 times as fast, child labor would only end in 2060, the report concludes.

In 2020, the number of child laborers around the world rose again to 160 million, up from 152 million four years earlier. In 2024, there were a still-high 138 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 engaged in age-inappropriate and/or hazardous work.

While child labor in Asia and Latin America has decreased throughout, it rose again in Sub-Saharan Africa between 2012 and 2020. While in 2016, 22.4 percent of children between the ages of 5 and 17 were in child labor in the region, that number had risen to almost 24 percent in early 2020, before now sinking back to 21.5 percent. As the number of children in Sub-Saharan Africa is rising, the same estimated absolute number was actually engaged in child labor in 2020 and 2024 - a staggering 86.6 million. Due to progress in other regions, the global share of children in child labor decreased from 9.6 percent in 2020 to 7.8 percent in 2024.

The report also reveals that one of the most common images of child labor in the developing world – children working for a wage on factory floors – is actually the least common scenario. Child labor in industry stood at 13 percent globally, being trumped by work in the service sector (27 percent) as well as the most common field for child labor, agriculture (61 percent). Earning a wage is also most uncommon for children, except for in Latin America, as a large majority of child laborers work with their families.

Child labor in Latin America and Asia typically involved more children from ages 12 to 17, more employed or self-employed work, more urban work and more work in services and industry, even though the agricultural sector still provided the biggest share of jobs for children in the regions. In Africa, younger children working and agricultural work were more dominant, at 69 percent under the age of 12 and 70 percent working in farming.

Globally, around 39 percent of child workers carried out hazardous work, defined as work likely to harm a child's health, safety or morals, compared with almost half of child workers four years ago.