ILO report: 2.1 billion people worldwide engage in unpaid work monthly

The 2026 State of the World’s Volunteerism report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) reveals that 2.1 billion people, roughly one-third of the world’s working-age population, volunteer every month, doing unpaid work.

Africa has the highest involvement, with a 58.5 percent volunteer rate.This shows that in many places, community survival depends on “mutual aid” rather than government programmes.

The report also discovered that most people do not volunteer through famous organisations or big charities. Instead, they help their neighbours and communities directly.

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This becomes a major tipping point in how we view charity and completely changes how we understand human kindness and community support.

This update does not mean there has been a sudden rush of new volunteers. Instead, it shows that the ILO has improved its “measurement tools” to find people who were previously invisible in official data.

By focusing on developing countries and informal work, researchers discovered that human solidarity is a much larger safety net than once thought.

Informal help leads the way
The report findings shows the following:

Direct volunteering: 25 percent of people help others informally.

Organisation-based volunteering: Only 11.7 percent work through formal groups.

Europe and the Arab States have the lowest rates at around 24 percent.

This matters because it proves that the world’s economy and social stability rely heavily on unpaid work.

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For years, this was a blind spot for governments. Now with the scale of this work, leaders can no longer ignore the value of informal “social capital” when making big policy decisions.

The work of informal community leaders and “everyday helpers ” is finally being recognised as a vital resource. This could lead to better support and protection for those who help their neighbours.

However, if the large and traditional NGOs do not learn to work with local, informal networks, they may find themselves out of touch with how people actually give and receive help today.

Why it matters
Measuring volunteer work is about more than just numbers; it is about seeing human effort as a renewable resource for development. When we know where people are already helping each other, governments can identify where public services are failing and where they need to provide more resources.

The ILO is now calling on countries to start measuring volunteer work regularly using these new international standards. The goal for the next year is to move this data from paper to practice, helping to build more resilient societies that support both formal and informal workers.