Employment is a key factor in self-sufficiency. On average, just under 60% of the population over age 15 were employed in Asia/Pacific (59%) and OECD countries (58%) in 2024 (Figure 4.3). In that year, employment rates were above 70% in Cambodia, Korea DPR and Viet Nam, while employment rates were below 40% in Nepal and Tajikistan.
With the outbreak of the COVID‑19 pandemic in 2020, the upward trend in employment rates over the past decade came to a halt in many countries in the Asia/Pacific region. Employment rates in 2023 are still below those recorded in 2010 in more than half of Asia/Pacific countries. The largest decreases in employment between 2010 and 2024 – above 5 percentage points, were recorded for China, Kyrgyzstan and Thailand.
People in high-income economies are more likely to work in the non-agricultural sector compared with those in low-income economies (Figure 4.4). Over 80% of people employed in Hong Kong (China), and Singapore are engaged in the service‑sector with less than 0.5% of all employed in the agricultural sector. By contrast, over 50% of employed people in Armenia, Lao PDR and Nepal are in the agricultural sector.
Informal employment prevails in Asia/Pacific economies (Figure 4.5). More than 80% of workers in the non-agricultural sector are engaged in informal employment in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Nepal, Pakistan, Tonga and Timor-Leste. Except for Sri Lanka, women in countries in South Asia such as Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan are more likely to be in informal employment in the non-agricultural sector than men. The opposite is true in Brunei Darussalam, Mongolia, Samoa and Sri Lanka, where men are more likely to be in informal employment by 8 percentage points or more.
