The percentage of people in the world working in the Industry field in 2019 is 23.08%. This vuold mean that if we take 100 workers at random it is likely that 23 of them work in the field of Industry. Basically almost 1/4 of all workers work in this sector. But which nations in the world have the highest percentage of workers in this field? How has the Industira data evolved over time? We look at that in today’s article: Top Countries by Employment in Industry – 1990/2019.
Top 25 Countries by Employment in Industry
Let’s start by going into detail right away. Later on, we’ll look at the global data instead. In 2019, the top three nations in the world by percentage of people employed in industry are Qatar, Turkmenistan, and the Czech Republic. Qatar, for example, has more than half of the workers who are employed in this industry. This is followed by other nations, such as Turkmenistan, which has a value of almost 40 percentage points, and the Czech Republic with 37.25. Among the top 25 nations in the world, 9 of these are part of Asia. 11 are part of Europe (especially Eastern Europe). 2 from Africa and 1 from Oceania (Tonga). The gap between the first nation in the world in 2019 and the twenty-fifth, that is, between Qatar and Serbia, is almost double. If Qatar has a value of 53.7% in Serbia, the percentage value is 27.43%.
What did the situation look like almost 30 years earlier, in 1991? In first place were 4 states of Europe. In order Slovenia, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria. These 4 countries of Europe ranged from 45.8% to 41.9%. Among the 25 nations in the world for percentage of workers in Industry 17 were part of Europe. Among the European nations we also see larger countries, in terms of population, such as Russia, Germany and Italy. Asian countries in this case were “only 6” out of 25.The Top 25 also included Argentina, a Latin American country that had a value of 32.9% of the total. The gap between this country – 25th – and Slovenia – first – was 13 points. Very different from today where the gap between Qatar and Serbia is almost double.
Employment in industry and agriculture (% of total employment)
If above we have seen the trend of the main countries in the world, what is the worldwide trend? How many people (estimated) are working in the Industry sector as a percentage? In 2019 this value was 22.66%. The value has been steadily declining since 2012 (except in 2018 where it rose slightly). In general, however, despite this slightly downward trend, the percentage of people working in Industry has grown a lot since the 2000s. In fact, it went from 20.31% in 2002 to a high in 2012 with 23.31%. It is clear that an increase of 3 points is an incredible increase in absolute value of workers employed in this sector.
But how did the data evolve if we take another important sector such as agriculture? In fact, we can see how if all in all the Industry has grown a lot, in some nations in particular, agriculture has completely dropped. In fact, workers engaged in agriculture in 2019 are 26.76% of the total. That’s a steep decline from 43.7% in 1991. In essence, if in the 90s about 4 out of 10 people worked in agriculture, now the figure is 2 and a half out of 10. A strong change that has steadily declined especially since 2003.
Below I have made the graphical comparison between Industry (in red) and Agriculture (in blue). As you can see, agriculture has declined very rapidly. Industry, on the other hand, has grown steadily over time.
Sources and useful links
I used data in the World Bank to create this article and video.
If you like this article, in the coming days I would like to continue the analysis with data on the employed, as a percentage, in services.
In the meantime if you want you can read another in-depth analysis here: Top 15 Countries by Total Exports – 1970/2019
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