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Care is a large part of the world of work, although it is often counted across separate industries. The International Labour Organization’s 2024 conference report cites an estimate of 381 million care-economy jobs, about 11.5 percent of global employment. The figure is an estimate in a policy report, not a count of current vacancies. It includes different kinds of work and employment arrangements.
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Care work includes childcare, long-term care, health services, education, domestic work, and support roles that help provide these services. The ILO report distinguishes workers in care sectors from domestic workers and other jobs that support care provision. That scope matters. A headline employment total does not describe one occupation, one credential, or one route into paid work.
The same system includes unpaid care within households. The ILO reports that women perform more than three quarters of unpaid care work worldwide. Its 2025 brief says 748 million people were outside the labour force in 2023 because of unpaid care responsibilities. The estimate includes 708 million women and 40 million men. These are global estimates tied to unpaid-care definitions, not direct measures of people who could immediately take a job.
Care needs and paid employment are connected, but the relationship is not automatic. A shortage of affordable services can restrict the time available for other paid work. At the same time, care workers themselves may face low pay, long hours, limited social protection, and occupational risks. The ILO’s 2025 brief describes these conditions as persistent decent-work deficits and notes that women make up about 65 percent of the care workforce.
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Employment projections require careful reading. The ILO’s 2024 report models a policy package covering paid leave, breastfeeding breaks, early-childhood education, and long-term care. Under that investment scenario, it estimates 280 million jobs by 2030 and another 19 million by 2035. The total includes direct care positions and jobs in other sectors. It is a modeled potential linked to investment, not a fixed forecast or a list of openings.
The breakdown shows why the total should not be read as one job category. The report assigns 96 million potential jobs to childcare, 136 million to long-term care, and 67 million indirectly to other sectors by 2035. Each area involves different employers, skills, training, working conditions, and public responsibilities. The projection says little about an individual role’s pay or availability in a particular place.
The ILO’s 2025 brief offers a related estimate of up to 299 million jobs by 2035 from employment-intensive public investment in care. That is close to the earlier report’s total, but it comes from a later brief describing an investment approach. The two figures should not be treated as independent measurements of actual hiring. Both depend on policy design and financing.
For career analysis, the useful distinction is between a sector’s scale and a worker’s opportunity. A large global estimate cannot answer whether a funded position exists, what qualifications it requires, or whether its conditions meet decent-work standards. Those questions need local vacancy data, employer details, and current rules. The global reports establish the system’s size and constraints, not an individual income outcome.
Care employment sits at the intersection of public services, household needs, and labour-market participation. The evidence points to both a large workforce and uneven job quality. Tracking how investment becomes staffed services gives a clearer picture than treating projections as promises. This is a useful subject to revisit as labour and care policies change.
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