The Labour Rights Index is a de jure index that measures the major aspects of employment regulation affecting a worker during the employment life cycle (10 indicators, 46 sub-indicators or components) in 145 countries. It limits itself to the presence or absence of relevant labour legislation only.
It has 10 new countries, thus raising the number of countries from 135 in 2022 to 145;
It now includes more contextual indicators to help understand the scores in a country;
As before:
- It gives a complete legal basis for each component score, adding to the transparency on how each country was scored and rated;
- It shares relevant legislative trends since 2022, whether there has been a reform or if the legislation has remained the same;
The Labour Rights Index has 10 indicators and 46 sub-indicators, components or evaluation criteria. The scoring is based on an analysis of thousands of pages of labour legislation. Instead of engaging outside experts, the work is done solely by the WageIndicator Labour Law Office, i.e., the Centre for Labour Research (Pakistan), with support from WageIndicator country teams.
The Index looks at every aspect of the working lifespan of a worker and identifies the presence of labour rights, or the lack of it, in national legal systems worldwide. It covers 10 topics/indicators and 46 components/evaluation criteria. All of these are based on substantive elements of the Decent Work Agenda. All these are grounded in UDHR, five UN Conventions, five ILO Declarations, 35 ILO Conventions, and four ILO Recommendations.
The Labour Rights Index measures major aspects of employment regulation that affect a worker during the employment life cycle. The Index provides an overall score for each of the 145 countries covered. Forty-six (46) data points are obtained across 10 indicators of four to five binary questions, where each indicator represents an aspect of work which is considered important for achieving decent work.
The scores for each indicator are acquired by computing the unweighted average of the components under that indicator and measuring the result to 100. The final scores for the countries are then determined by taking each indicator's average, where 100 is the maximum score to achieve.
Certain assumptions for scoring exist in the methodology. The following assumptions are used by the Labour Rights Index. The worker in question:
- Is skilled;
- Is a minimum wage worker;
- Resides in the economy's most populous province/state/area;
- Is a lawful citizen or a legal immigrant of the economy;
- Is a full-time employee with a permanent contract in a medium-sized enterprise with 60 employees;
- Has work experience of one year or more;
- Is assumed to be registered with the relevant social security institution and for a long enough time to accrue various monetary benefits (maternity, sickness, work injury, old age pension, survivors', and invalidity benefit); and
- Is assumed to have been working long enough to access leaves (maternity, paternity, paternal, sick, and annual leave) and various social benefits, including unemployment benefits
The Labour Rights Index is essentially directed at governments and international organisations, targeting trade union federations, multilateral organisations, and national-level organisations such as government agencies. It is aimed to be a tool for policymakers. However, most of all, the Index can be used by workers to learn about their rights and guide them in making employment decisions.
National scores can be used as starting points for negotiations and reforms by civil society organisations. Ratings can be made prerequisites for international socio-economic agreements to ensure compliance with labour standards, similar to the EU's GSP+ and USA’s GSP, which require compliance in law and practice with certain labour standards in order to avail certain trade benefits through reduced tariffs.
The Labour Rights Index is also a useful benchmarking tool that can be used in stimulating policy debate as it can help expose challenges and identify best practices. The Index provides meaningful input into policy discussions to improve labour market protections at the country level.
The Labour Rights Index is a repository of 'objective and actionable' data on labour market regulation along with the best practices which can be used by countries worldwide to initiate necessary reforms. The comparative tool can also be used by Labour Ministries to find the best practices within their own regions and around the world.
The Labour Rights Index is a de jure index, and it measures the presence or absence of relevant legislation only. While recognising the existence of implementation gaps in legislative provisions, well-drafted and inclusive laws are still a precondition for attaining decent work. There is not a single country where workers have attained decent work without legislation. Implementation is critical; however, it is difficult to take a de facto approach and measure the labour rights situation across 145 economies and 46 evaluation criteria in a comparable and cost-effective way. The detailed country profiles provide a list of contextual indicators, including but not limited to the labour force, GDP per capita, the share of informal employment in the country, trade union density, work injuries, etc., to contextualise the scores given to a country. The scores must be interpreted and seen together with this contextual information.
The Index is based on labour legislation, which applies to the formal economy in the private sector. Despite the fact that more than 60 per cent of the global workforce is in need of transitioning from the informal to the formal economy, focusing on the labour laws affecting the formal sector retains attention on the sector since the labour laws in the formal economy are more applicable and that is the ultimate goal. Focusing on the formal economy and its applicable legislation also indicates the rights that will be available to the informal economy workers on successful transition to the formal economy. However, to recognise the new forms of work, legislation affecting gig economy workers has been made part of the Index.
The Labour Rights Index is biennial and updated every two years. The first and second editions of the Index were launched in 2020 and 2022, respectively. The third edition of the Index in 2024 takes into account the labour legislation, in effect on 1 January 2024.
The Labour Rights Index shows the statutory labour rights for the workers in formal employment relationships because this is where the labour law generally applies. The informal economy, as defined by ILO Recommendation 204 on Transition from Informal to Formal Economy, refers to all economic activities by workers and economic units that are – in law or in practice – not covered or insufficiently covered by formal arrangements. A country's labour law, based on a minimum employee threshold, is not applicable to the informal sector. However, workers in the informal sector can use the country profiles in the Index to learn about basic labour rights that are available in the country and launch advocacy campaigns through their representative organisations to have access to the same or similar labour rights. The first step for the informal sector workers should be to get all those rights which have been guaranteed to the formal sector workers. The next step could be striving towards the rights set in the international labour standards.
The Labour Rights Index does not take into account part-time work legislation. However, we plan to include equal treatment of part-time workers with full-time workers in the upcoming editions of the Index. The current Index still gives pro rata treatment to part-time workers when compared with full-time workers.
The Labour Rights Index and its base document. i.e. the Decent Work Checks are mainly focused on legislation in the private sector. The public sector jobs are comparatively more secure and have access to many workplace rights. In many countries, the same labour legislation exists for both public and private sector workers, except for some differences in the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike. In countries where separate labour legislation exists for the public sector, e.g. India, the Index considers only the private sector labour law.
However, since the public sector comprises more than 10% of total employment in a country, the Index may, in the future, start covering the public sector legislation in WageIndicator countries and also analyse it. The legislation in the public sector may still not be used for scoring purposes, but it can be shown how legislation differs in both sectors.
The Labour Rights Index covers all such enterprises, irrespective of their size, where private sector labour law is applicable. However, to ensure the comparability of data, such standardised assumptions are used. For example, in Pakistan, industrial sector workers are eligible for severance payment if they are working in an enterprise employing at least 49 workers. Pakistan and Sri Lanka are such countries where different legislation exists for industrial and non-industrial sectors. Standardised assumptions have been used to take such differences into account. The World Bank, in both its reports, The Doing Business Report and Women, Business and Law Report, uses a similar assumption.
The Labour Rights Index is based on Decent Work Checks, a product of WageIndicator, which summarises labour legislation on 13 topics and 48 sub-topics. These documents take into consideration all labour legislation, including labour law, as well as any rules and regulations notified under it.
The current version of the Index provides the legal basis for each of the 46 components for all 145 countries. In addition, the Labour Rights Index is based on Decent Work Checks which are available both as standalone documents and are also available on WageIndicator country websites as Labour Law pages. A user can access either of these resources and look into actual text. We also provide reference to actual law in these pages. At the same time, it is also recommended that the LRI methodology be looked at to better understand the scoring.
The Labour Rights Index is a comparative tool, an international qualification standard, which allows its users to compare labour legislation around the world. In a way, it helps you navigate the labour markets of 145 countries. The labour market regulation affecting more than 90% of the 3.5 billion global labour force has been analysed and scored under the Index. The aim is to make all this abstract legal information accessible to workers in order to improve their working lives. Similarly, the work is useful for national and transnational employers to ensure compliance with local labour legislation.
Despite the availability of multiple indices measuring performance, the Labour Rights Index is the most comprehensive one yet in terms of scope. The Index looks at every aspect of the working lifespan of a worker and identifies the presence of labour rights, or the lack of it, in national legal systems worldwide. It has 10 indicators and 46 sub-indicators or components. The scoring is based on analysing thousands of pages of labour legislation. The work is done primarily by the WageIndicator Labour Law Office, i.e., the Centre for Labour Research, with support from WageIndicator global and country teams.
The Labour Rights Index is essentially directed at governments and international organisations, targeting trade union federations, multilateral organisations and national level organisations like government agencies. However, most of all, the Index can be used by workers. The importance of labour legislation cannot be overemphasised since well-drafted and inclusive laws are still a precondition for attaining decent work.
National scores can be used as starting points for negotiations and reforms by civil society organisations. Ratings can be made prerequisites for international socio-economic agreements to ensure compliance with labour standards, similar to the EU's GSP+ and the USA’s GSP, which require compliance in law and practice with certain labour standards in order to avail of certain trade benefits through reduced tariffs.
The Labour Rights Index is also a useful benchmarking tool that can stimulate policy debate by exposing challenges and identifying best practices. The Index provides meaningful input into policy discussions to improve labour market protections at the country level.
The Labour Rights Index is a repository of “objective and actionable” data on labour market regulation and best practices, which countries worldwide can use to initiate necessary reforms. Labour ministries can also use the comparative tool to find the best practices within their own regions and around the world.
The Labour Rights Index can work as an efficient aid for workers to gauge the protection of labour rights in labour laws across countries. For migrants as well as posted workers, Labour Rights Index country profiles, along with WageIndicator Decent Work Checks, provide necessary information on workplace rights in both origin and destination countries. With increased internet use, the availability of reliable and objective legal rights information is the first step towards compliance. The Labour Rights Index helps in achieving that step.
The Labour Rights Index, co-produced by the WageIndicator Foundation (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) and the Centre for Labour Research (Islamabad, Pakistan), analyses labour laws in 145 countries, as applicable on 1 January 2024. This is the third edition of the Index. The first two were released in 2020 and 2022.
Each indicator and its components are supported by the international legal framework set out in UDHR, five UN Conventions, five ILO Declarations, 35 ILO Conventions, and four ILO Recommendations. The 46 sub-indicators use different UN and ILO instruments as a benchmark.
Period covered: The Labour Rights Index 2024 analyses labour legislation as applicable on 1 January 2024. The earlier editions of the Index in 2020 and 2022 also analysed and scored local labour legislation on 1 January of that year. The coded and scored data under the Labour Rights Index is available from 2020 onward.
Approach to scoring: The Labour Rights Index has 10 indicators and 46 sub-indicators. Each indicator and its components start with the international regulatory standard (based on some international labour standard), and then sets out instructions or scoring methodology for the scoring process. The scoring is done by identifying the relevant provisions of the law. The country's legislation was collected through online law libraries and ILO’s NATLEX database. Wherever possible, the texts were consulted in the original language. Thanks to WageIndicator’s extensive team network, the original texts were consulted for the following official languages (Arabic, English, French, Italian, Russian, and Spanish). With the work on WageIndicator DecentWorkCheck documents, WageIndicator already collects all labour legislation in these 145 countries. The scoring methodology was devised in 2020, with minor revisions in the methodology of the Indicators on Social Security and Freedom of Association (in 2024).
While we acknowledge the support of country teams and experts, the core team is solely responsible for the final scoring and any errors or omissions. Every humanly possible effort has been made to ensure that the scores assigned to countries are accurate, in the sense that relevant legislation was identified, and the scoring methodology was correctly applied. However, due to the scale and complexity of this work, it is still possible that some errors remain. Please share suggestions for corrections or improvements to our work with us.
Attribution of numerical values: A value of ‘0’ or ‘1’ is assigned to each component or sub-indicator. The resulting scores for each indicator and country are expressed in the Excel spreadsheet and are used to calculate a country’s overall scores. ‘0’ stands for non-compliance of local legislation with international labour standards (ILS), and ‘1’ stands for meeting the standard set by the ILS. The indicators and components under the Labour Rights Index indicators use binary coding only. The indicators and components under the Labour Rights Index indicators use binary coding.
Areas of labour law coded and scored in the Labour Rights Index: Ten areas of labour law are coded and scored. These are: the law governing fair wage payments, the law governing working time, the law regarding employment protections including dismissals, the law regarding work-life balance and family responsibilities including maternity and work, the law on occupational safety and health, the law on social security, the law on fair treatment and equality of opportunity and treatment at work; the law on child and forced labour; and the law on freedom of association, collective bargaining and the right to strike. The 46 sub-indicators or components in the index cover these areas.
Statutory law and case law: The Labour Rights Index considers only statutory laws, including rules and regulations issued by the relevant Ministries/Departments. In rare cases where the government-issued legislation mentioned a court case (declaring certain provisions of legislation unconstitutional), the case law was considered.
Collective Bargaining: Collective bargaining agreements are used for scoring in those countries where either Interprofessional Collective Agreements exist or where the minimum wages are collectively negotiated. According to the WageIndicator Minimum Wages Database, minimum wages are collectively negotiated in the following countries, and there is no statutory minimum wage: Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Namibia, Norway, Sweden, and Zimbabwe.For Niger and Togo, Interprofessional collective agreements have been used to score these countries.
Federal systems: If labour law does not apply uniformly throughout the country (as in federal, confederal, or complex structure states), the legislation applicable in the most populous part or province or state is considered for scoring that country. The list below shows the name of a country and the most populated region/state/province in that country.
- Australia (New South Wales)
- Bosnia and Herzegovina (The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina)
- Canada (Ontario)
- China (Guangdong)
- India (Uttar Pradesh)
- Pakistan (Punjab)
- United States of America (California)