The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) latest figures on illegal profits generated by forced labor worldwide show a huge increase over the last ten years according to the Associated Press. Up 37% from the last estimate, the agency cites the annual total as $236 billion, meaning more people are being exploited and more cash is being generated.

Earnings effectively “stolen from the pockets of workers”

Forced labor is defined by the ILO as any work done by the employee under penalty or the threat of penalty and it can happen at any phase of employment. This includes during the recruitment process, the living conditions associated with work or workers forced to stay in a job they want to quit. The latest estimates by the ILO are that on any given day in 2021, an estimated 27.6 million people were in forced labor. That’s a 10% rise from 5 years earlier with more than half of that number coming from the Asia-Pacific region, with Africa, the Americas, and Europe-Central Asia making up the rest.

ILO Director-General, Gilbert Houngbo, said,

“Forced labor perpetuates cycles of poverty and exploitation and strikes at the heart of human dignity, (and) we now know that the situation has only got worse.”

The ILO further found that 85% of the people in modern slavery were working in “privately imposed forced labor,” which includes slavery, serfdom, bonded labor, and forced begging. The $236 billion annual amount represents earnings “effectively stolen from the pockets of workers” by the people forcing them to work, as well as money taken from remittances of migrants and lost tax revenue for governments.

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