Countries by Vulnerable employment, male (% of male employment) (modeled ILO estimate)

Ranking 2025

Values shown in %.

Analysis

This metric measures vulnerable employment among males as a share of total male employment, expressed as a percentage. According to the source definition, vulnerable employment is contributing family workers and own-account workers as a percentage of total employment. These two categories typically lack formal contracts, social protection, or stable wages. The indicator code is SL.EMP.VULN.MA.ZS, sourced from the World Bank World Development Indicators. The dataset covers 186 countries, all with data from within the last 7 years, and 100% of datapoints are classified as official. No extreme outliers were identified using a 3-standard-deviation threshold, and average year-over-year change is 2.6%, indicating stability. The ranking does not include female or aggregate employment figures, only the male share.

The top of the ranking is concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Chad leads at 86.2% (Rank 1), followed by Ethiopia at 82.4% (Rank 2), Afghanistan at 81.1% (Rank 3), and Madagascar at 81.0% (Rank 4). Sierra Leone (80.9%, Rank 5), Tanzania (78.1%, Rank 6), South Sudan (77.8%, Rank 7), and Burundi (76.9%, Rank 8) also rank in the top ten. India appears at Rank 20 with 69.0%, indicating that high male vulnerable employment is not limited to the smallest or lowest-income economies. Countries at the top of this ranking tend to have large agricultural sectors and limited formal wage employment, though the data itself does not provide explanatory sectoral breakdowns.

The middle of the ranking shows considerable geographic diversity. Moldova ranks 35th at 57.6%, the highest-ranked European country by a significant margin. Colombia (44.5%, Rank 57), Indonesia (44.3%, Rank 59), and Peru (43.4%, Rank 62) sit in the upper-middle range. Greece at Rank 101 (25.2%) is the lowest-ranked EU member state in the top half. Toward the bottom, Gulf Cooperation Council states cluster tightly: Saudi Arabia ranks 184th at 1.1%, Bahrain 185th at 0.78%, and Qatar last at 0.40%. The United States ranks 177th at 4.8% and Germany 178th at 4.7%, placing both below most European peers in this metric.

A key limitation is that this metric treats own-account work uniformly regardless of income level or sector. A self-employed professional and a subsistence farmer both count equally as vulnerable. Countries with large informal sectors may underreport contributing family workers if household surveys are infrequent or have limited rural coverage. The modeled ILO estimates used here introduce smoothing that can mask short-term changes. Rankings for countries with older underlying survey data may not reflect recent labor market shifts. The metric also covers only male employment and cannot be used to infer conditions for women or the total workforce.

Methodology

The metric is sourced from the World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator code SL.EMP.VULN.MA.ZS, with a reference data year of 2025. The definition used is: vulnerable employment is contributing family workers and own-account workers as a percentage of total employment, applied specifically to male employment. Values are modeled ILO estimates. Coverage spans 186 countries, all meeting the recency threshold of data from within the last 7 years. All 186 datapoints are classified as official quality. No extreme outliers were detected at the 3-standard-deviation threshold. The average year-over-year change across the dataset is 2.6%, indicating low volatility. Values range from 0.40% (Qatar, Rank 186) to 86.21% (Chad, Rank 1), a spread of 21,525%. The metric excludes female and aggregate employment and does not distinguish by sector, income level, or formality beyond the two defined categories.

Sources

• World Bank