Forests employ approximately 42 million people worldwide, with women accounting for one quarter of the workforce, according to new research from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Thünen Institute of Forestry.
Published on Tuesday, Updated methodology to quantify forest-sector employment: Global and regional estimates presents fresh estimates that help close critical data gaps in global and regional forest-sector employment between 2011 and 2022.
The joint paper draws on annual data for the sector and its subsectors for 182 countries, representing 99 percent of the world's forest area.
The study also presents the first global sex-disaggregated employment estimates for the forest sector, revealing that women account for nearly 10.6 million jobs, or 25 percent of forest-sector employment, and highlighting persistent disparities between women and men across regions. The widest disparity was found in Europe, where 1.8 percent of men and only 0.5 percent of women were employed in the forest sector in 2022. By contrast, these disparities were narrower in Africa, the Americas and Asia.
"To help build a more sustainable and resilient forest sector, we need a clear picture of who works in our forests - and that starts with sex-disaggregated data," said Zhimin Wu, FAO Assistant Director-General and Forestry Division Director. "Internationally comparable data on employment in the sector is essential for creating policies that protect both people and forests."
Vital data and improved methodology
The forest sector contributes to national economies and sustainable development by creating jobs, generating economic value and supporting environmental sustainability.
Building on earlier joint work, FAO, ILO and the Thünen Institute of Forestry have developed a new methodology - the Forest EMployment (FEM) model - to improve the availability and consistency of forest-sector employment data. The model generates annual, sex‑disaggregated estimates for the forest sector and its subsectors, providing more robust evidence base for policy and analysis.
The study estimates that the forest sector employed at least 42 million people worldwide in 2022 - around 1.2 percent of total employment - representing a decline of approximately 3.1 percent compared to 2011.
Asia continues to account for the largest share of forest-sector employment in total employment (around 1.4 percent). In Europe, the share declined slightly, from 1.3 percent in 2011 to 1.2 percent in 2022. Africa saw fluctuations - starting at 1.2 percent in 2011, peaking in 2016, and decreasing to 1.0 percent by 2022 - while employment levels in the Americas remained relatively stable at around 0.8 percent, with minor fluctuations following the COVID‑19 pandemic.
Across the sector, wood and wood product manufacturing remains the largest source of employment, accounting for approximately 58 percent of total forest employment, followed by forestry and logging, and pulp and paper manufacturing.
The FEM model was developed in the context of FAO's Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) 2025, with the assistance of the European Union.
Compared with previous estimates, the FEM model introduces several methodological improvements, including annual estimates instead of three-year intervals, and the use of country‑specific socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, labour‑market indicators and forest‑sector variables to estimate missing data.
