Skip to content
CountryAtlas
Employment & wages · Structure

Employment in services (% of total employment)

% of employment · Annual · 187 of 218 countries (86 %) · 1991–2025
World average (population-weighted)
49.7 %
across 182 countries, 2025
Latest observation
2025
Source updated
13 Jul 2026
CountryAtlas refreshed
11 Sep 2026
Snapshot 20260911T072322Z

World map

One value per country for the selected year. Hatched = no data.

No data available

Trend

Aggregate across the countries of a group, year by year. Computed by CountryAtlas from country values — no published aggregate is used.

Not enough countries to aggregate this indicator for World.

Highest and lowest

The five leaders and the five trailing countries, 2025.

Highest 5

Lowest 5

Compare countries

Pick up to five countries. Defaults to the three largest economies with data.

No series for the selected countries.

Definition

Definition
Unit
% of employment (%)
Frequency
Annual
Aggregation
none · No direction
Valid range
0100

Sources & provenance

Every value on this page comes from one of these series, chosen per country by priority.

  1. Priority #1
    World BankWDISL.SRV.EMPL.ZSok
    187 countries · 6,531 obs. · → 2025 · CC BY 4.0

    Employment is defined as persons of working age who were engaged in any activity to produce goods or provide services for pay or profit, whether at work during the reference period or not at work due to temporary absence from a job, or to working-time arrangement. The services sector consists of wholesale and retail trade and restaurants and hotels; transport, storage, and communications; financing, insurance, real estate, and business services; and community, social, and personal services, in accordance with divisions 6-9 (ISIC 2) or categories G-Q (ISIC 3) or categories G-U (ISIC 4). Source: ILO Modelled Estimates database (ILOEST), International Labour Organization (ILO), uri: https://ilostat.ilo.org/data/bulk/, publisher: ILOSTAT, type: external database, date accessed: January 17, 2026

    Open at source

Series-level selection: for each country the whole series comes from the highest-priority source that has any non-forecast value for it. If a lower-priority source is more than three years fresher, the freshest source wins instead. Non-chosen values are kept as alternatives, never discarded.

Countries without data

Typical reasons: the source does not survey small territories or micro-states; the statistical office reports with a lag of one to three years; the series is only compiled for member countries of the source organisation (OECD, EU, Eurostat); or a value exists but failed validation and is quarantined rather than shown.

Downloads & API

Every observation for this indicator, all countries and years, with provenance columns.

API example

One country, full history. Replace CAN by any ISO3 code or slug.

bash
curl -s "https://www.countryatlas.co/api/v1/series?country=CAN&indicator=employment-services-share" | jq '.series[0] | {country: .country.name, unit, last: .stats.last, source: .provenance.source_name}'

API documentation