ILO’s Employment and Social Trends 2026 Projects Global Unemployment Rate Unchanged at 4.9% in 2026In January 2026, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) released its latest report titled ‘Employment and Social Trends 2026: World of Work Series’ in Geneva, Switzerland. As per the report, the global unemployment rate is projected to remain unchanged at 4.9% in 2026 which is equivalent to 186 million people/workers worldwide still lacking access to quality jobs and also, this global unemployment rate will continue to be the same till 2027.
- The report has further highlighted the wider global jobs gap (i.e. capturing people who want paid work but cannot access it) is expected to reach 408 million in 2026.
Key Findings:
Extreme Poverty: As per the report, the share of workers living in extreme poverty declined by 3.1 percentage points to 7.9% between 2015 and 2025.
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- Nearly 300 million workers continue to live in extreme working poverty, earning less than USD 3 per day.
Global Informality Rate: Between 2015 and 2025, the global rate of informality increased by 0.3 percentage points, after having declined in the previous decade (2005-2015).
- Globally, 2.1 billion workers are projected to be informally employed in 2026.
Global LFPR: The report has projected that the global Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR)will decline by nearly 0.2 percentage points each year, reaching 60.5% in 2027.
Demographic Shifts: The Global employment growth rate is estimated at 1.0% in 2026, which is slightly below the average of the previous decade.
- It also projected job growth will be 0.5% in upper middle-income countries compared to 1.8% in lower middle-income countries, and 3.1% in low-income countries.
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