According to the 2020 annual results, the working age population (16 years and above) was 7,472,601 of which 4,212,972 persons (56.4 percent) were in the labour force, while 3,259,630 were outside the labour force.
For those in the labour force 3,460,860 were employed, while 752,112 were unemployed. Among those outside the labour force, 1,801,596 were engaged wholly or mostly in subsistence foodstuff production, not classified as employment according to the 2013 international standards on statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization.
The 2020 employment to population ratio was 46.3 percent, 1 percentage point higher than the one of 2019 and the highest since 2017. It was higher among males (55.2 percent) as compared to females (38.5 percent), higher among adults (49.5 percent) than among youth (42.6 percent) and higher in urban areas (54.9 percent) as compared to rural areas (44.0 percent).
The annual unemployment rate stood at 17.9 percent, indicating that roughly for six persons in the labour force there was one person unemployed.
The unemployment rate was higher among females (20.3 percent) than among males (15.9 percent) and higher among young people (22.4) than among adults (14.1 percent).
It was slightly higher in the urban compared to rural areas of Rwanda (18.1 and 17.7 percent respectively).
The registered unemployment rate in 2020 was the highest since 2017 and it was 2.7 percentage points higher than the one found one year earlier (15.2 percent).