Child labor sounds as if it belongs to a long ago era, but for 138 million children it is a daily routine.
"These are children who work under the hot sun in farms, tending crops when they should be in school," says Claudia Cappa, a senior analyst with UNICEF. "They are scrubbing floors behind closed doors where they are extremely vulnerable to violence and exploitation, these children will carry very heavy loads in mines, breathing in fumes that damage their health."
She's one of the authors of a new report on child labor from UNICEF and the International Labor Organization.
Despite the grim topic, the report offers encouraging news: Steady progress has been made in reducing child labor globally. In the past five years, the number of working children has dropped by 20 million.
But the goal to eliminate it is far from being met.
"We have nearly halved the number of children involved in child labor globally since 2000 from 246 million to 138 million children," says Theresa Betancourt, director of the program on children and adversity at Boston College. "But that's still unacceptable, so we have a long way to go."
Of the 138 million children, 54 million toil in environments that are harmful to their physical and mental health, according to the report.
That number includes children forced into armed groups or subject to sexual exploitation — the most extreme forms of child labor. Researchers say it's difficult to obtain reliable data on those issues.
Asia's successful strategies
The reason behind these startling numbers is straightforward. "We have plenty of evidence that indicates that poverty is a key driver of child labor," says Cappa. Most children enter the workforce around the age of 5, often helping a family business, she says.
"So reducing poverty is a critical strategy for eliminating child labor. We also know that children need to go to school. Schooling has to be free. So we know what works."
Asia has embraced that philosophy with positive results. The percentage of children who work has dropped from 13% in 2008 to just 3% in 2024 — from 114 million to 28 million.
Governments get credit for this improvement, says Betancourt. They've taken steps to aid poor families — giving them cash, for example — and they've taken measures to ensure that kids go to school.
"We have seen investments in Asia in quality education, universal access to education, compulsory education, which means children are spending their time learning and in school settings," Betancourt says. And there's an added benefit: Kids in school often get free meals.
Why rates are high in sub-Saharan Africa
In contrast, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest global rate of child labor — about 1 in 4 kids work. And the report points out there has only been a slight improvement, with the rate dropping from 25% in 2008 to 22% in 2024.
There are several reasons why child labor is harder to address in these countries..
Most of child labor overall is in agriculture, according to the report. And in sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture is the main livelihood, families often enlist their children in their farm work, according to Cappa.
And even if parents want to send their kids to school, there may not be a school they can enroll them in, says Betancourt. With a rapidly growing youth population in Africa, the number of schools has not kept pace. Betancourt says there's been an underinvestment in building new schools in sub-Saharan Africa in particular.
Ongoing and emerging conflicts are another reason for the higher rates of child labor in sub-Saharan Africa. This violence destabilizes economies, adding more pressure for struggling families to put their children to work.
An uncertain future
Future progress is in jeopardy in this era of aid cuts. Some of the world's wealthiest countries fund programs in low- and middle-income countries that aim to address poverty and access to education. But in the past year, countries like the U.S. and the U.K. have cut billions of dollars in funding for such programs. Experts are concerned that could slow down the advancements made in eliminating child labor as well, since the issues are so interconnected.
For UNICEF's Claudia Cappa, the matter of child labor is a personal one. Her own mother worked cleaning houses and farming in the south of Italy when she was 9 years old, because her parents thought she would be more useful to the family if she worked rather than went to school.
Cappa's mother is now 75 years old, and Cappa often thinks of the opportunities she herself had that her mother did not, just one generation away.
"I didn't have the same level of pressure," she says. "I was able to go to school, I was able to graduate, to apply for a position in UNICEF, to come to the United States and to speak to you today."
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