Self-employed workers
Employers, own-account workers, members of producers' cooperatives and contributing family workers, whose pay depends directly on the profits of what they produce, as a percentage of total employment. ILO modelled estimates, ages 15 and over.
ILO modelled estimates: model outputs that fill years without a survey, not survey results. The latest year is a nowcast and is revised as surveys arrive. Includes unpaid family workers, so it is high where small farms dominate and is not a measure of entrepreneurship.
Key facts
- Self-employed workers in the World was 46.4% in 2025, according to the World Bank.
- Self-employed workers in the United States was 6.1% in 2025, according to the World Bank.
- Chad had the highest self-employed workers of 181 countries in 2025, at 91.6%, and Qatar the lowest, at 0.8%. Source: the World Bank.
- Published for 187 places, with figures from 1991 to 2025.
Rankings
Countries by self-employed workers, 2025
Places with data
World, EU and euro area
Countries
- India
- China
- United States
- Indonesia
- Pakistan
- Nigeria
- Brazil
- Bangladesh
- Russia
- Ethiopia
- Qatar
- United Kingdom
- Venezuela
- Gabon
- Singapore
- Sudan
Use this data in your AI agent
Invokely serves this figure to AI assistants through MCP and to code through a REST API, with the source and citation attached. Ask your assistant:
Which places have the highest self-employed workers? Use official data and cite it.
rank_places {"indicator":"self_employed_share","level":"country"}
GET https://invokely.ai/api/v1/rank?indicator=self_employed_share&level=country