Child labor remains a global scourge. Although there has been significant progress in reducing it since 2000, the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and international conflicts have pushed millions of families into poverty and threatened to halt advancements.

However, the latest UNICEF and International Labour Organization ILO) report on the topic notes a decline compared with the last report four years ago, with 138 million involved in child labor in 2025, down from 160 million.

"The findings of our report offer hope and show that progress is possible," said ILO Director-General Gilbert F. Houngbo, in a press release. "But we must not be blindsided by the fact that we still have a long way to go before we achieve our goal of eliminating child labor."

What constitutes child labor?

Nina Mast, an analyst with the Washington D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, told DW that child labor is exploitative or oppressive labor by a minor or "any work that is excessive in the sense that it interferes with a child's education or health or well-being."

Harmful child labor is typically associated with the world's poorest countries. According to Claudia Cappa, senior adviser for statistics and monitoring at UNICEF, sub-Saharan Africa is home to two-thirds of all children in child labor.

However, she cautioned that it is also an issue for higher-income parts of the world, such as the European Union and the United States.

"While child labor is more common in low-income countries, it still exists in high-income ones," she told DW. "Often, it's hidden in agriculture, informal work, or within marginalized communities. Poverty, inequality, and exclusion make certain groups of children vulnerable, no matter where they live."

US sees an increase

Nina Mast argues child labor breaches are not just about unpaid or hazardous work but also about conditions such as hours worked or any "excessive or exploitative work that interferes with education."

Her main focus is on the US where breaches of the country's Fair Labor Standards Act — the main worker protection legislation in the country — have increased since the pandemic.

According to the US Department of Labor, the number of children found employed in violation of federal child labor laws increased 31% between 2019 and 2024.

Mast believes that increase in violations is related to ramped up enforcement measures from the US Department of Labor. 

"I think it's difficult to disentangle the real increase in violations with the increased enforcement that is simply finding more violations. But it is the case that the more we look, the more we find," she said.

"I think that we should consider this a crisis that has not been resolved in terms of the recent increase in violations," she added, pointing out that the Trump administration has announced plans to weaken various labor protection laws.

She says the typical violations in the US involve minors working too late or for too long, or cases where minors are employed using equipment that is prohibited for their age or doing jobs that they should not be doing based on their age.

Another major problem, she added, was the agriculture industry, where children as young as ten are sometimes employed in harmful work.

"A problem that we haven't addressed in the US is the fact that the standards are much lower in agriculture," said Mast. "Agriculture is the deadliest industry for children in terms of the fatality rate. That's an issue that remains unaddressed."

Also a European problem

According to the International Labour Organization, around 71% of all child laborers are in agriculture. That is also a major part of the problem in Europe, according to Marco Dubbelt. He is a director with Global March, a network of trade unions and civil society organizations dedicated to the elimination of child labor, slavery and trafficking.

He says there have been recent violations in Albania, Romania and in the fruit and vegetable sector in Italy. "It doesn't hit you like a child working in the mines in Congo," he told DW. "But it's very dangerous work. The children work with pesticides, work under enormous heat stress. It's really unhealthy for the child."

UNICEF's Claudia Cappa points out that prevalence of child labor in the EU is low compared to global levels, but says "it exists in more hidden forms, including in agriculture, informal services, and among marginalized communities."

Both Cappa and Dubbelt caution that reliable data in higher-income countries is hard to come by and that there is a lack of reporting.

Back in 2021, the EU signed up to a global initiative to designate 2025 as the year to end child labor in all forms. While that goal has not been achieved, the EU does have relatively strong legislation aimed at protecting children and minors from harmful labor practises.

The EU Directive on the Protection of Young People at Work requires member states to ban the employment of children under 15 or those still in full-time education, with some exceptions. It also sets out various obligations for employers with regards to young workers' health and safety.

Stephen Blight, UNICEF's senior adviser on child protection, believes the EU's introduction of its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which came into force in July 2024, was an important step towards tackling the problem. He told DW the directive has "enormous potential to contribute to the respect and protection of children's rights, if fully and properly implemented."

However, he expresses concerns over the EU Commission's so-called Omnibus proposal, which aims to simplify and reduce certain regulations and reporting requirements for businesses across the bloc.

Blight argues that the proposal could weaken progress in relation to EU supply chains, pointing to the fact that one of the plans is to limit the extent to which EU companies will have to carry out due diligence on suppliers. "It risks overlooking the deeper parts of supply chains, where the worst forms of child labor often occur."

Marco Dubbelt agrees that one of the biggest challenges for the EU in relation to child labor relates to its supply chains from outside the bloc.

He thinks the problem is bigger than many estimate but emphasizes again that a lack of reliable data is a major issue, and that more research and reporting is required.

"What I've seen is that a lot of children are connected with supply chains, but it's sometimes very difficult to make that connection because so much of the work is off the grid, and under the table."

Edited by: Uwe Hessler