Labour force, total
- World total
- 3.72B
- 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
- 768M
- 618M
- 175M
- 147M
- 117M
Source: World Bank — WDI · SL.TLF.TOTL.IN
Lowest 5
Source: World Bank — WDI · SL.TLF.TOTL.IN
Compare countries
Pick up to five countries. Defaults to the three largest economies with data.
No series for the selected countries.
Definition
- Definition
- Unit
- people
- Frequency
- Annual
- Aggregation
- sum · No direction
- Valid range
- 0 – ∞
Sources & provenance
Every value on this page comes from one of these series, chosen per country by priority.
- Priority #1Open at source187 countries · 6,718 obs. · → 2025 · CC BY 4.0
Labor force comprises people ages 15 and older who supply labor for the production of goods and services during a specified period. It includes people who are currently employed and people who are unemployed but seeking work as well as first-time job-seekers. Not everyone who works is included, however. Unpaid workers, family workers, and students are often omitted, and some countries do not count members of the armed forces. Labor force size tends to vary during the year as seasonal workers enter and leave. Source: International Labour Organization (ILO), type: estimates based on external database; United Nations (UN), publisher: UN Population Division; Staff estimates, World Bank (WB)
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.
curl -s "https://www.countryatlas.co/api/v1/series?country=CAN&indicator=labor-force" | jq '.series[0] | {country: .country.name, unit, last: .stats.last, source: .provenance.source_name}'