By: Dwight Links
The 2026 analysis of Labour & Societal Trends by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) revealed that global labour markets are set to have a low quality of employment for workers.
“Globally, improvement in the quality of employment has slowed over the past two decades. Between 2015 and 2025, the share of workers living in extreme poverty declined by only 3.1 percentage points, to 7.9 per cent, compared with a decline of 15 percentage points in the previous decade,” outlines the analysis.
The report was published on 19 January 2026, a few days after the global upheaval on the invasion of Venezuela, and a month before the closure of the Strait of Hormuz which has added further uncertainty and threats of rapid inflation to the various labour markets of the world.
The ILO says that more than a quarter of a billion workers are living in dire circumstances, as the organisation noted that workers’ conditions have worsened over a 10-year period.
“This leaves 284 million workers living in extreme poverty – that is, less than US$3.00 a day. Moreover, both extreme and moderate working poverty rates increased in low-income countries between 2015 and 2025, with almost 68 per cent of workers living in extreme or moderate poverty in 2025,” stated the agency.
Informal Work Increases
According to the report, the global rate of informality increased by 0.3 percentage points between 2015 and 2025, the previous decade showed a decline.
“By 2026, 2.1 billion workers globally are projected to be informally employed. Informality is typically associated with lower job quality due to limited access to social protection, rights at work, workplace safety and job security,” the report describes.
It adds that this increase largely reflects the growing share of employment in countries with higher rates of informality, chiefly in Africa and Southern Asia, making efforts to reduce informality in these economies critical.
What emerges from the analysis is that ‘self-employed’ workers also saw negative impacts in much of the Global South nations.
“The incidence of own-account work, which in low- and middle-income countries is often low paid and undertaken out of necessity, rose again between 2015 and 2025,” shares the report.
The ILO says this slowdown in the transformation of economies towards sectors with more productive workers and better working conditions acts as a roadblock in narrowing decent work deficits.
Employment Trends
According to the ILO, workers who changed from one job to another halved across the world.
“The process of workers moving across economic activities over time has halved globally over the last two decades. The slowing transition of workers towards sectors with higher formality and employee status is not only a major driver of the global deceleration in improvements in work quality, but also of weakening productivity growth,” the agency highlights.
Another aspect to consider is that of the number of retiring workers; the analysis outlines that the trend will only go down, even as the world has recovered since the pandemic.
“The global labour force participation rate is projected to decline by around 0.2 percentage points each year, reaching 60.5 per cent in 2027. This structural downward trend, driven in part by the growing number of retirees as populations age, has accelerated once again due to the halt in the moderating effect of rising participation rates for women in lower-middle- and high-income countries between 2015 and 2025,” the report notes.
Global unemployment is projected to remain unchanged at 4.9 per cent in 2026, says the ILO. The agency added that labour market indicators do not reflect the complete picture of job markets.
“This stability should not be mistaken for a return to healthy labour market conditions. Beneath the surface, progress in job quality has stalled, inequalities remain entrenched, and labour markets are increasingly exposed to global economic, demographic and technological risks that could quickly undermine current gains,” the report finds.
