Photo by Ben White on Unsplash (illustrative)
On 11 June 2025, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF published new global estimates showing that child labor is falling again. About 138 million children were in child labor in 2024, more than 20 million fewer than four years earlier.
Key facts
Roughly 138 million children were in child labor in 2024, about 8% of all children worldwide.
The number has fallen by more than 100 million since 2000, when it stood at 246 million.
Asia and the Pacific saw the sharpest drop, from 49 million to 28 million children since 2020.
Children in hazardous work, the most harmful kind, fell to about 54 million.
Why it matters
Every child who leaves work has a better chance of staying in school, staying healthy and finding decent work later in life. The new figures also reverse a worrying rise between 2016 and 2020, showing that the trend can be turned around.
Worth noting
The world missed the goal of ending child labor by 2025, and the agencies say progress would need to be about 11 times faster to end it within five years. Sub-Saharan Africa still has around 87 million children in child labor, nearly two-thirds of the total.