How many children work?

	Boy doing silver and gold embroidery, India Photo: © Global March

There are approximately 246 million children aged 5-17 in child labor worldwide. This is nearly the size of the U.S. population of 293,027,571!¹ Of these, about 186 million are below the age of 15. Strikingly, the majority of these children, nearly 110 million, are less than 12 years old.²

One in every eight children 5 to 17 years old - 179 million - work in the worst forms of child labor. Of these,

• 8.4 million work in the unconditional worst forms of child labor, including forced and bonded labor (5.7 million), trafficking (1.2 million), armed conflict (0.3 million), prostitution and pornography (1.8 million) and illicit activities, including drug production and trafficking³ (0.6 million);
• the majority (171 million, or 69.5 percent) work in "hazardous" situations or conditions. Of these, 111 million are under 15. A stunning 55 percent of child laborers below 12 years old are already in hazardous occupations.⁴

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¹ Central Intelligence Agency July 2004 estimate.
² Every Child Counts: New Global Estimates on Child Labor, International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor, International Labor Organization, Geneva, April 2002, p. 15, 19-20 and 22, available from http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/ipec/simpoc/others/globalest.pdf; Internet accessed February 2005.
³ Article 3, Trafficking Protocol Definition of Trafficking in Persons, UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons; available from http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/trafficking_convention.html; Internet accessed April 2005.
⁴ Every Child Counts: New Global Estimates on Child Labor, International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor, International Labor Organization, Geneva, April 2002, p. 23, available from http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/ipec/simpoc/others/globalest.pdf; Internet accessed February 2005.