Countries by Employers, male (% of male employment) (modeled ILO estimate)
Nigeria ranks 1st globally with 28.19% of male employment classified as employers, a share more than 150 times higher than Ethiopia's last-place figure of 0.19%. The 186-country dataset spans every major region and income level, with values ranging from under 0.5% across several Gulf and Eastern European states to double digits in a handful of African and Southeast Asian economies. That spread reflects deep structural differences in how male employment is organized across labor markets.
Ranking 2025
Values shown in %.
Analysis
This metric measures employers as a share of total male employment, expressed as a percentage. Employers are defined, per the International Labour Organization, as those workers who, working on their own account or with one or a few partners, hold the type of jobs defined as self-employment jobs (i.e. jobs where the remuneration is directly dependent upon the profits derived from the goods and services produced), and, in this capacity, have engaged, on a continuous basis, one or more persons to work for them as employee(s). Crucially, this category excludes the self-employed who work alone and excludes employees and unpaid family workers. The indicator code is SL.EMP.MPYR.MA.ZS, drawn from the World Bank World Development Indicators using modeled ILO estimates. The dataset covers 186 countries, all with data from within the last seven years, and 100% of data points are classified as official quality. The ranking contains 30 extreme outliers at the 3-sigma threshold, and the range from 0.19% to 28.19% represents a spread of over 15,000%, signaling that comparisons across distant parts of the distribution should be made with caution.
Nigeria tops the ranking at 28.19%, far ahead of second-place Djibouti at 23.15%. Third-place Timor-Leste records 16.77%, followed by Angola at 15.01% and Uzbekistan at 14.21%. Azerbaijan (6th, 13.14%) and Honduras (7th, 11.81%) round out the group with values above 11%. Among high-income economies, Australia ranks 11th at 9.18% and Switzerland ranks 12th at 9.01%, notably outranking Italy (14th, 8.73%), Greece (9th, 9.72%), and several other European nations. Higher values in this metric reflect labor markets where a relatively larger share of working men both employ others and operate on a self-employment basis, rather than working as wage employees.
The middle of the ranking clusters tightly. Countries ranked 60th through 130th span a narrow range from roughly 5.5% down to 3.2%, encompassing economies as varied as Germany (62nd, 5.40%), the United States (126th, 3.17%), and Japan (143rd, 2.33%). The United States ranking 126th, below countries such as Cuba (32nd, 7.13%) and Nicaragua (33rd, 7.11%), is a notable anomaly visible in the data. At the lower end, Gulf states perform particularly poorly: Kuwait ranks 179th at 0.77%, Qatar ranks 183rd at 0.34%, and Bahrain sits at 166th with 1.46%. Belarus (181st, 0.71%), Moldova (185th, 0.20%), and Ethiopia (186th, 0.19%) occupy the final positions. The bottom of the distribution includes both high-income Gulf economies and low-income sub-Saharan African nations, suggesting the metric captures structural labor market composition rather than income level alone.
Several limitations apply to this metric. The figures are modeled ILO estimates, meaning they are not always derived from direct surveys but may involve interpolation or extrapolation, particularly for countries with infrequent labor force surveys. The employer category is narrowly defined and does not capture the full scope of entrepreneurship or business ownership, as sole traders with no employees are excluded. Differences in how countries classify employment statuses in national surveys can affect cross-country comparability. The 30 extreme outliers identified at the 3-sigma threshold suggest that for some countries, values may reflect data anomalies or structural labor market features that are difficult to compare directly. Additionally, informal sector employment, which is prevalent in many lower-income countries, may be inconsistently captured across national survey methodologies.
Methodology
Rankings are based on the World Bank World Development Indicators indicator SL.EMP.MPYR.MA.ZS, which measures employers as a percentage of total male employment using modeled ILO estimates for the data year 2025. The source definition is applied verbatim: employers are those workers who, working on their own account or with one or a few partners, hold the type of jobs defined as self-employment jobs (i.e. jobs where the remuneration is directly dependent upon the profits derived from the goods and services produced), and, in this capacity, have engaged, on a continuous basis, one or more persons to work for them as employee(s). The dataset covers 186 countries, all passing the minimum coverage threshold of 80. All 186 countries (100%) have data from within the last seven years, and 100% of data points are classified as official quality. The ranking identifies 30 extreme outliers at the 3-sigma threshold. The value range runs from 0.19% (Ethiopia) to 28.19% (Nigeria), a spread of 15,106.5%. Average year-over-year change is 5.5%, well within the 50% volatility threshold. Higher values indicate a greater share of male workers who both self-employ and hire at least one continuous employee.