Countries by Self-employed, male (% of male employment) (modeled ILO estimate)

Ranking 2025

Values shown in %.

Analysis

This metric measures self-employed males as a percentage of total male employment, using modeled estimates from the International Labour Organization. According to the source definition, self-employed workers are those workers who, working on their own account or with one or a few partners or in cooperative, hold the type of jobs defined as a 'self-employment jobs,' i.e. jobs where the remuneration is directly dependent upon the profits derived from the goods and services produced. Self-employed workers include sub-categories of employers, own-account workers and members of producer cooperatives. Values are expressed as a percentage of male employment. The dataset covers 186 countries for the 2025 data year, with 100% of datapoints flagged as official quality and 97.3% of countries reporting a value for the latest year. The full range runs from 0.74% to 88.07%, a spread of over 11,700%.

The top of the ranking is dominated by Sub-Saharan African nations and South Asian economies. Chad leads at 88.07% (Rank 1), followed by Madagascar at 86.14% (Rank 2), Niger at 84.61% (Rank 3), Nigeria at 83.04% (Rank 4), and Sierra Leone at 83.02% (Rank 5). Afghanistan ranks 6th at 82.77% and Ethiopia 8th at 82.57%. India, at Rank 18 with 73.34%, is notably the highest-ranked large middle-income economy in the top tier. These placements reflect labor markets where wage employment in formal sectors is limited and a large proportion of men work independently or in small productive units.

The middle ranks show considerable diversity. Moldova ranks 43rd at 57.83%, an unusually high figure for a European country relative to its regional peers. Azerbaijan at 62.44% (Rank 36) also stands out within the post-Soviet space. Greece ranks 85th at 34.89%, the highest self-employment share among EU member states in this ranking. Gulf states occupy the bottom positions: Saudi Arabia ranks 181st at 5.28%, the UAE 182nd at 5.03%, Oman 183rd at 4.73%, Kuwait 184th at 3.68%, and Bahrain 185th at 2.25%. Qatar's 0.74% at Rank 186 is by far the lowest recorded value, more than 1.5 percentage points below Bahrain in second-to-last place.

Because the data relies on ILO modeled estimates rather than direct survey results in all cases, values for countries with limited or infrequent labor force surveys may carry higher uncertainty. The indicator captures only male self-employment as a share of male employment and does not reflect absolute numbers of self-employed workers, meaning a small country with high informality can rank alongside large economies. The definition does not distinguish between subsistence-level own-account work and higher-productivity entrepreneurship, which can make high rankings difficult to interpret uniformly. Countries with large informal sectors may systematically overcount or undercount self-employment depending on survey methodology. Year-over-year volatility across the dataset averaged just 1.9%, suggesting the modeled estimates are relatively stable, though this stability may also mask real short-term fluctuations in countries with sparse underlying data.

Methodology

Data are drawn from the World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator code SL.EMP.SELF.MA.ZS, for the reference year 2025. The metric is defined using ILO modeled estimates. Per the source definition, self-employed workers are those workers who, working on their own account or with one or a few partners or in cooperative, hold the type of jobs defined as a 'self-employment jobs,' i.e. jobs where the remuneration is directly dependent upon the profits derived from the goods and services produced. Self-employed workers include sub-categories of employers, own-account workers and members of producer cooperatives. The ranking covers 186 countries, all above the 80-country coverage threshold. All 186 countries have data from within the last seven years, and 100% of datapoints are classified as official quality. The dataset contains 0 extreme outliers by the 3-sigma threshold. The value range spans 0.74% to 88.07%, a spread of approximately 11,768%. Average year-over-year change across the dataset is 1.9%, indicating low volatility in modeled estimates.

Sources

• World Bank