Five Years of Taliban Rule: Afghan Women's Workforce Participation Plummets to 5%
The proportion of women in Afghanistan’s labour market has plummeted to just around one in twenty workers in the five years since the Taliban returned to power, according to a report published by the International Labour Organization (ILO) on Tuesday (18/08).
“Afghanistan is estimated to have the second-lowest female labour force participation rate in the world, at just 5.1% in 2026, amid very strict restrictions on women’s access to education and employment,” the ILO wrote.
The ILO urged urgent measures to address the “severe exclusion” experienced by women, saying this is also important for strengthening Afghanistan’s overall economic resilience.
The Taliban returned to power in August 2021 amid the withdrawal of US and NATO forces, ending a 20-year period when women enjoyed relatively better economic and educational freedoms after years under hardline Islamic rule.
The UN agency warned of “significant demographic and institutional changes” in the labour market since 2021, largely to the detriment of women.
Female labour force participation fell from 16.5% in 2020 to 5.1% in 2026. The figure is the second-lowest in the world, only slightly above war-torn Yemen. Young women categorised as “NEET” (not in education, employment, or training) reached 84% of that age group, up from 76% in 2020 and 68% in 2019. Among young men, the NEET rate is below 30% and continues to decline compared with its peak during the COVID pandemic in 2020.
The UN Development Programme noted one sector that is actually growing: women-owned businesses. The number of women-owned enterprises increased around tenfold, although precisely because other employment options are extremely limited.
“Afghanistan cannot build a resilient labour market while such a large portion of its population remains excluded from economic activity,” said Tite Habiyakare, senior coordinator and head of the ILO office for Afghanistan.
The report said Afghanistan’s labour market remains “under considerable pressure” five years after the Taliban takeover, and has only recovered moderately from the 2021 collapse.
Afghanistan’s GDP plunged around 15% when the Taliban returned to power amid the COVID pandemic and the exit of Western forces and funds. The figure remained in negative territory in 2022 and has only crept into positive growth since then, still far from pre-Taliban levels.
The number of jobs has begun to rise in absolute terms, but not quickly enough to keep pace with population growth, both from domestic births and the return of emigrants. As a result, the proportion of the population in work has stagnated at just under a third of the total population.
The report also urged increased investment in representative labour force data collection, warning that its data still relies on modelling estimates that “contain considerable uncertainty and should be interpreted with caution.”
The large-scale return of emigrants, especially from Iran and Pakistan, has been “one of the biggest labour market challenges facing Afghanistan,” the report said.
More than 6 million Afghans returned from Iran and Pakistan between 2023 and the end of May this year, driven by “a combination of policy, economic, and security factors.”
The report noted World Bank projections that this could halve the impact of remittance flows on Afghanistan’s economy, from around 4% of GDP in 2020 to around 2% of economic output in 2025.
“Since February 2026, the Middle East crisis has added uncertainty for Afghans living in Iran, in addition to the ongoing return policies,” the ILO explained.
The ILO also warned that the war in Iran poses additional risks for Afghanistan, in terms of general inflation, food and fuel prices, trade and transport disruptions, and the potential for a surge in returns from Iran.
Around 70% of workers, especially the less skilled, are at least sufficiently exposed to crisis-related factors such as energy prices. Around 30% face only mild exposure.
The report noted a sharp spike in inflation over the past 12 months, rising from less than 1% in May 2025 to around 8% in May 2026, and warned that such increases “disproportionately affect poor households and erode real incomes, especially among informal workers.”