Brazil cuts child labor to historic low

Brazil reduced child labor by approximately 600,000 children and adolescents over the last nine years.

The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) reported a 28.6% decrease in child labor between 2016 and 2025, reaching the lowest level since the country began collecting this data. As of 2025, 1.499 million children and adolescents aged 5 to 17 were still engaged in child labor, representing 4% of that age group.

The decline in child labor accelerated in the last year of the study. From 2024 to 2025, 151,000 fewer children and adolescents worked, a decrease of 9.2%. A large majority, 144,000, of those children came from families receiving Bolsa Família, a social welfare program. These numbers demonstrate the importance of social protection programs in fighting child exploitation. IBGE data showed that families receiving Bolsa Família experienced a more significant reduction in child labor.

In 2024, 717,000 children and adolescents in beneficiary families were working. By 2025, that number fell to 573,000, a 20.1% reduction. Although these families had lower average incomes, they saw faster progress in eliminating child labor, suggesting that income support combined with social protections and school attendance is effective. The highest rates of child labor occurred in the North of Brazil, where 6.3% of children aged 5 to 17 worked, while the Southeast had the largest total number with 481,000.