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Data

Share of children engaged in labor

What you should know about this indicator

Child labor is defined differently depending on the age group: for children aged 5-11, it includes those who did at least one hour of economic activity; for children aged 12-14, it includes those who did at least 14 hours of economic activity; and for children aged 15-17, it includes those who did at least 43 hours of economic activity during the reference week.

How is this data described by its producer?

Proportion of children engaged in economic activity, by sex and age (%)

Further information available at: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-08-07-01.pdf

Share of children engaged in labor
Proportion of children engaged in economic activity, by sex and age (%)
Source
International Labour Organization and UNICEF – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
October 29, 2025
Next expected update
October 2027
Date range
2010–2024
Unit
%

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

International Labour Organization and UNICEF – Data from multiple sources

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) dataset is the primary collection of data tracking progress towards the SDG indicators, compiled from officially-recognized international sources.

Retrieved on
October 29, 2025
Retrieved from
https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/dataportal
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
International Labour Organization and UNICEF via UN SDG Indicators Database (https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/dataportal), UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (accessed 2025). More information available at: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-08-07-01.pdf.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) dataset is the primary collection of data tracking progress towards the SDG indicators, compiled from officially-recognized international sources.

Retrieved on
October 29, 2025
Retrieved from
https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/dataportal
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
International Labour Organization and UNICEF via UN SDG Indicators Database (https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/dataportal), UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (accessed 2025). More information available at: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/files/Metadata-08-07-01.pdf.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Share of children engaged in labor”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from International Labour Organization and UNICEF. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260321-000130/grapher/children-aged-5-17-engaged-in-labor.html [online resource] (archived on March 21, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

International Labour Organization and UNICEF – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

International Labour Organization and UNICEF – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Share of children engaged in labor” [dataset]. International Labour Organization and UNICEF, “Data from multiple sources” [original data]. Retrieved April 5, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260321-000130/grapher/children-aged-5-17-engaged-in-labor.html (archived on March 21, 2026).

Download

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Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-aged-5-17-engaged-in-labor.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-aged-5-17-engaged-in-labor.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-aged-5-17-engaged-in-labor.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-aged-5-17-engaged-in-labor.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-aged-5-17-engaged-in-labor.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-aged-5-17-engaged-in-labor.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-aged-5-17-engaged-in-labor.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-aged-5-17-engaged-in-labor.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear