On the first day of May, International Labor Day, we thought it only right to report on the world labor force. The graph shows, as a red line, the number of people in the labor force worldwide from 1990 through 2011. These data come from the World Bank which defines the labor force as follows:

Total labor force comprises people ages 15 and older who meet the International Labour Organization definition of the economically active population: all people who supply labor for the production of goods and services during a specified period. It includes both the employed and the unemployed. While national practices vary in the treatment of such groups as the armed forces and seasonal or part-time workers, in general the labor force includes the armed forces, the unemployed, and first-time job-seekers, but excludes homemakers and other unpaid caregivers and workers in the informal sector.

The labor force is, of course, a subset of the overall population and so we’ve included world population on the graph, as well as labor force participation rates, annually. Over the period 1990–2011 the labor force participation rate has actually declined, slightly, from 66.32% to 64.18%. Yet the labor force has grown at a faster rate than has population overall, 39.3% for the participation rate versus 31.4% for world population. Growing longevity is part of the reason for this seeming divergence.

To labor and laboring, within or outside the official labor force!

Geographic reference: World
Year: 2011
Market size: 3.26 billion.
Source: “Labor Force, Total,” part of a data set maintained by The World Bank and available online here. World population data are from the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2011).
Original source: The United Nations and The World Bank Group
Posted on May 1, 2013