168 million child working according to ILO

Because good news is in short supply these days, we’ll lead with that: The number of child laborers around the world is down to 168 million today from 215 million in 2008. Children performing the most hazardous labor have seen their ranks drop to 85 million from 171 million in 2000.

That’s about as cheery as this story gets, and even that information is fairly bleak.

According to the International Labour Office, that pool of 168 million child workers ages 5 through 17 is larger than all but seven nations on the globe. It’s bigger than the populations of Bangladesh (152.5 million), Russia (143.5 million), Japan (127.3 million) and Mexico (118.4 million). It’s more than double the size of Germany (80.5 million) and nearly the size of France (66 million), the U.K. (63.7 million) and Spain (46.7 million) combined.

Oh, and those 85 million kids working nights and long hours, laboring underground or underwater and being subject to physical, psychological and/or sexual abuse? That’s 11 million more children than the U.S. has. It’s also not counting the absolute worst forms of child labor — the forced prostitution and paramilitary service fueled by human trafficking — because nations don’t tend to freely offer accurate numbers on those kinds of transgressions, and many of those children are usually part of the hazardous labor pool anyway.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via New child labor figures: 168 million working- MSN Money.