Dataset · ILO
Composite Rate of Labour Underutilisation (LU4)
11 years, 2014–2024 · 76 countries · 3 measures
The unemployment rate counts only people who are actively looking for work and could start at once. This broader rate also counts people working fewer hours than they want and people who want a job but have stopped looking or cannot start yet — the International Labour Organization’s widest measure of work people want and do not have.
This site holds every year from 2014 to 2024, read from ILO’s own data and stored exactly as published.
Composite Rate of Labour Underutilisation (LU4) · the file
- Newest
- Composite Rate of Labour Underutilisation (LU4), 2024
- Held
- 11 years · 809 rows
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
0111 years
Every year
Every year comes from ILO’s 2026 release, recalculated on one method. Each opens the full table for that year; each downloads as a CSV.
Every year in one file, one row per country per year: labour-underutilisation-all-editions-nations-inquiry.csv
026 columns
What’s in the file
Every column, what it holds, how it is stored and what its values look like — what a reader needs before opening the file.
| Column | What it holds | Stored as | Range, 2024 | Distinct | Empty | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ISO Codecountry_codeIdentifier | The ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code, added by this site. Every table here joins on it. | Text · 3 letters | — | 76 | 0 | |
CountrycountryName | The country’s name, as this file spells it. | Text | — | 76 | 0 | |
Composite rate of labour underutilisation, LU4 (% of the extended labour force)labour_underutilisationHeadline | The headline figure: Composite rate of labour underutilisation, LU4 (% of the extended labour force). | Number · up to 3 decimals | 1.495 Thailand49.816 Malawimiddle 12.559 | 76 | 0 | |
Women (%)femaleWomen | The same measure, for women. | Number · up to 3 decimals | 1.454Thailand55.523Malawimiddle 13.890 | 76 | 0 | |
Men (%)maleMen | The same measure, for men. | Number · up to 3 decimals | 1.530Thailand43.488Malawimiddle 11.319 | 76 | 0 | |
ILO observation statusobservation_statusFlag | ILO’s flag on the reading, such as an estimate or a provisional figure. | Text | — | 1 | 72 |
Profiled from the newest file. Range: the lowest and highest value, with the country holding it when only one does. Spread: countries in ten equal steps from lowest to highest. A higher value is the worse result.
03130 countries across every year
Who is covered
How many countries each year holds, continent by continent, who joined and who left, and which places this site covers that the dataset never has.
| 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Africa | 7 | 5 | 6 | 10 | 6 | 14 | 6 | 10 | 10 | 13 | 12 |
| Americas | 13 | 15 | 16 | 14 | 17 | 15 | 12 | 16 | 12 | 15 | 16 |
| Asia | 10 | 7 | 9 | 15 | 12 | 17 | 14 | 17 | 14 | 13 | 13 |
| Europe | 35 | 35 | 35 | 36 | 36 | 36 | 36 | 35 | 36 | 36 | 34 |
| Oceania | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| All | 66 | 62 | 67 | 77 | 73 | 86 | 69 | 79 | 75 | 79 | 76 |
Who joined and who left
- 2024
+ Argentina
+ Bahamas
+ Bhutan
+ Fiji
+ Guyana
+ Lesotho+ Malawi
+ Palestine
− Antigua and Barbuda
− Burkina Faso
− Gambia
− Grenada
− Indonesia
− Iceland
− Kyrgyzstan
− Kiribati
− Slovakia
− Eswatini
− Tonga - 2023+ Antigua and Barbuda+ Burkina Faso
+ Ghana+ Gambia+ Grenada
+ Guatemala+ Indonesia+ Kiribati
+ Panama+ Eswatini
+ Seychelles+ Tonga
− Costa Rica
− Laos
− Madagascar
− Niue− Palestine
− Sudan
− Tuvalu
− Samoa - 2022
+ Bangladesh
+ Switzerland+ Laos+ Madagascar
+ Mali
+ Nigeria+ Niue+ Sudan
+ Senegal+ Tuvalu+ Samoa
− Afghanistan
− Comoros
− Ethiopia− Grenada− Guatemala− Guyana− Indonesia
− Iraq
− Kenya
− Pakistan− Panama− Eswatini
− Timor-Leste− Tonga
− Uganda - 2021
+ Bolivia
+ Barbados
+ Colombia+ Comoros+ Ethiopia+ Guatemala+ Iraq+ Kenya+ Pakistan+ Panama
+ Singapore+ Eswatini+ Timor-Leste+ Tonga+ Uganda
+ Zimbabwe− Mali
− Myanmar
− Montserrat
− New Caledonia
− Serbia− Seychelles - 2020+ Afghanistan+ Grenada+ Mali+ Montserrat
− United Arab Emirates− Bolivia− Barbados
− Côte d’Ivoire
− Cook Islands− Colombia− Guatemala− Kenya
− Cambodia
− Lebanon− Lesotho
− Maldives
− Marshall Islands
− Mauritius− Nigeria− Panama− Senegal
− Somalia
− Tunisia
− Vanuatu− Zimbabwe - 2019
+ Angola+ Côte d’Ivoire+ Cook Islands
+ Georgia+ Kenya+ Cambodia+ Lebanon+ Lesotho+ Maldives+ Marshall Islands
+ Mongolia+ Nigeria+ Senegal+ Somalia+ Seychelles+ Tunisia+ Vanuatu+ Zimbabwe− Antigua and Barbuda− Burkina Faso− Grenada
− Sierra Leone− Tonga - 2018+ United Arab Emirates+ Antigua and Barbuda+ Burkina Faso+ Grenada+ Guyana
+ Honduras+ Myanmar+ Sierra Leone+ Tonga− Afghanistan
− Armenia− Bangladesh
− Belize− Côte d’Ivoire− Laos
− Liberia
− Mauritania
− Nepal− Senegal
− Togo− Uganda− Samoa - 2017+ Afghanistan+ Bangladesh
+ Belarus
+ Brunei
+ Jordan+ Laos+ Liberia+ Mauritania+ New Caledonia+ Nepal
+ Philippines
+ Rwanda+ Togo+ Uganda+ Samoa
+ Zambia− Cook Islands− Maldives
− Paraguay
− Suriname− Eswatini− Seychelles
Not in this dataset · 95 places this site covers
ILO gives no figure for these in any year held here. It is the publisher’s choice of scope, and each place’s profile shows what is measured.
Algeria
American Samoa
Andorra
Anguilla
Aruba
Australia
Azerbaijan
Bahrain
Benin
Bermuda
Botswana
British Virgin Islands
Cabo Verde
Cameroon
Cayman Islands
Central African Republic
ChadChannel Islands
China
Cuba
Curaçao
Djibouti
Dominica
DR Congo
Ecuador
Egypt
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Faroe Islands
French Polynesia
Gabon
Gibraltar
Greenland
Guam
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Haiti
Hong Kong
India
Iran
Isle of Man
Israel
Jamaica
Japan
Kazakhstan
Kosovo
Kuwait
Libya
Liechtenstein
Macau
Malaysia
Mexico
Monaco
Morocco
Mozambique
Namibia
Nauru
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
North KoreaNorthern Cyprus
Northern Mariana Islands
Oman
Palau
Papua New Guinea
Peru
Puerto Rico
Qatar
Republic of the Congo
Russia
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Martin
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
San Marino
São Tomé and Príncipe
Saudi Arabia
Sint Maarten
Solomon IslandsSomaliland
South Sudan
Syria
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Trinidad and Tobago
Türkiye
Turkmenistan
Turks and Caicos Islands
Ukraine
United States Virgin Islands
Uzbekistan
Vatican City
Venezuela04Provenance
Where it comes from
The path from the publisher to this page, and what was checked and changed on the way.
1 · Publisher
International Labour Organization (ILO)
2 · Their file
Composite Rate of Labour Underutilisation (LU4) 2024
Read from the publisher’s own service.3 · Read by this site
September 29, 2026
Imported by a script that parses each figure and writes it down unrounded.4 · Stored as
11 files, one per year
Each downloads as a CSV, or every year together as labour-underutilisation-all-editions-nations-inquiry.csv5 · Used on
Its statistic page, and every profile it measures
Precision
The headline is stored to 3 decimals, as published.
Rounded by this site
Never. Tables on screen may show fewer decimals; the files never do.
Changed by this site
Reshaped into one row per country: regional and income-group totals are left out, only the columns listed are kept, each row gets its ISO 3166 code, and some country names are brought to one spelling. No value is recalculated, rescaled or rounded.
Read from ILOSTAT directly, from national labour force surveys. The ILO’s modelled version of the same rate was not used: it holds regional and income-group totals only, and no country.
05Reuse
Licence and credit
What the publisher’s licence lets you do, what it asks of you, and a credit line and citation ready to copy.
Licence · checked September 29, 2026
- Share and redistribute it
- Adapt it and build on it
- Use it commercially
- Credit the publisher
- Say what you changed
Share, adapt and use commercially. Credit the publisher and say if you changed anything.
A credit line
Source: International Labour Organization (ILO), Composite Rate of Labour Underutilisation (LU4), via Nations Inquiry.
Cite this dataset
International Labour Organization (ILO). Composite Rate of Labour Underutilisation (LU4), 2014–2024 [data set]. As held by Nations Inquiry, https://nationsinquiry.com/datasets/labour-underutilisation
The publisher’s own citation: International Labour Organization. ILOSTAT. Geneva: ILO.
Plain-language summary, not legal advice. The licence text is what binds.
06Where it is used
Around the site
Where these numbers appear on this site, and the datasets nearest to it.
Charted
Composite Rate of Labour Underutilisation (LU4) by countryWho is highest, the map, the spread, who rose and fell, and the records.
Subjects
Near neighbours
- Employment-to-Population RatioILO · 35 held · 1991–2025
- Unemployment RateILO · 35 held · 1991–2025
- Vulnerable EmploymentILO · 35 held · 1991–2025
07Questions
Composite Rate of Labour Underutilisation (LU4): questions and answers
What is the Composite Rate of Labour Underutilisation (LU4)?
The unemployment rate counts only people who are actively looking for work and could start at once. This broader rate also counts people working fewer hours than they want and people who want a job but have stopped looking or cannot start yet — the International Labour Organization’s widest measure of work people want and do not have.
Which years of the Composite Rate of Labour Underutilisation (LU4) can I download?
All 11, from 2014 to 2024, each as a CSV file, or every year together in one CSV.
Does ILO rank countries on it?
No. ILO publishes values only. The positions shown on this site are derived by ordering the published values, and are labelled as ours.
Can I use it commercially?
Yes, under CC BY 4.0, with credit to ILO. The licence text is linked on this page.