Sri Lanka’s employed population crossed the eight-million mark in 2025.
The latest Labour Force Survey from the Department of Census and Statistics puts employment at 8,079,040 people. Men accounted for 5.30 million of those workers, while women accounted for 2.78 million. The employment rate was 96.1%.
At first glance, these figures suggest a large and increasingly active workforce.
But the wider labour-market data tells a more complicated story.
Sri Lanka’s population aged 15 and above was estimated at 17.03 million in 2025. Of this group, 8.41 million were in the labour force, giving the country a labour force participation rate of 49.4%.
That means more than half of the 15+ population was outside the labour force.
Nearly 6.2 Million Women Are Outside the Labour Force
The gender gap is one of the clearest signals in the data.
The male labour force participation rate was 69.1% in 2025. For women, it was only 32.4%.
In total, 8.63 million people aged 15 and above were outside the labour force. Women accounted for 6.19 million of them, or about 72%.
Household work was the main reason among economically inactive women.
It accounted for 58.1% of women outside the labour force. Education accounted for another 17.8%, while 16.0% were retired or elderly. Illness or disability accounted for 6.6%.
This creates an important economic question.
The issue is not simply whether women are employed. It is whether the economy and labour market are structured in a way that allows more women to participate in paid work.
That has implications for employers, skills development, childcare, flexible work and the future size of Sri Lanka’s productive workforce.
Youth Face a Different Problem
Overall unemployment fell to 3.9% in 2025 from 4.4% in 2024.
The number of unemployed people stood at 329,211. Female unemployment was 6.1%, compared with 2.8% for males.
But the national unemployment rate hides a much larger problem among young people.
Unemployment among people aged 15 to 24 stood at 19.5%.
The rate was 16.5% for young males and 24.5% for young females.
Women aged 25 to 29 also recorded a 17.1% unemployment rate.
This matters because the transition from education to employment can shape a person’s future income, skills and career path.
For businesses, it also raises a different question: are young people leaving education with the skills employers actually need?
Services Are Becoming the Main Source of Jobs
The structure of employment is also changing.
Services employed 4.03 million people in 2025, accounting for 49.8% of total employment.
Industry accounted for 26.2%, while agriculture represented 23.9%.
The services share increased from 48.5% in 2024. Agriculture’s share declined from 26.0% to 23.9%.
This shift matters because the type of skills required by the economy changes with the structure of employment.
A larger service economy creates demand across areas such as business services, finance, tourism, information technology, education, logistics, retail and other service industries.
That makes human capital increasingly important.
More Workers Are Also Taking a Second Job
The labour market data contains another important signal.
Some 439,839 employed people, or 5.4% of the employed population, had a second job in 2025.
When main and secondary jobs are combined, the total number of jobs reached an estimated 8.52 million.
This does not mean that every second job reflects financial pressure. But it shows that employment is not always limited to a single occupation.
Income data also shows a sizeable gender difference.
The estimated average gross monthly salary for monthly-paid employees was Rs.65,325 in 2025.
The average was Rs.70,942 for men and Rs.57,867 for women.
Among daily-paid workers, estimated monthly earnings were Rs.41,290 for men and Rs.22,640 for women.
The Workforce Is Becoming More Digital
The labour-market picture is also connected to digital adoption.
Computer literacy increased from 35.9% in 2024 to 39.2% in 2025.
Digital literacy reached 72%.
Internet use also increased sharply, reaching 62.4% among people aged five to 69 in 2025. The comparable figures were 51.2% in 2023 and 54.6% in 2024.
These numbers point to a workforce becoming more connected to digital technology.
But access to technology alone does not guarantee employability.
The bigger challenge is turning digital access into job-ready skills, higher productivity and better-paying employment.
The Bigger Economic Question
Sri Lanka therefore enters the next phase of its economic recovery with a workforce that is already changing.
Unemployment has fallen. Services have expanded their share of employment. Internet use and digital literacy have increased.
But the country still has a large population outside the labour force, especially women. Young people face unemployment rates far above the national average, while earnings remain different across gender and employment categories.
For businesses, this is more than a set of labour statistics.
It is a picture of the talent pool available to the economy.
The next challenge is not simply to increase the number of people classified as employed.
It is to create an economy where more people can participate, young workers can move from education into productive careers, and workers can build the skills needed for a more service-based and digital economy.
That is where Sri Lanka’s labour-market numbers become an economic story.
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Last modified: September 20, 2026
