In Summary:
- Al Hussein Fadiga, a public communications specialist at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, has made a claim about Liberia’s labor force
- Fadiga claimed that 78 percent of Liberians are employed in the informal sector
- We have checked this claim by reviewing the sixth edition of the World Bank’s Liberia Economic Update and found that it is incorrect.
On January 29, Al Hussein Fadiga, a public communications specialist at the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, claimed that 78 percent of Liberians are employed in the informal sector, citing a World Bank report as his source.
Fadiga made the statement on ELBC during a post–State of the Nation Address panel discussion while defending President Joseph Boakai’s claim that his administration has created more than 70,000 short- and medium-term jobs.
The Claim
Said Fadiga: “According to the World Bank report, 78 percent of our people are employed in the informal sector.”
Rating Justification
To verify Fadiga’s claim, we reviewed publicly available World Bank reports on Liberia’s labor market.
We found the sixth edition of the World Bank’s Liberia Economic Update, titled From Stabilization to Inclusion: Pathways to Resilient Growth and Productive Jobs, published in September 2025.
On page 8 of this report, the World Bank notes that while labor force participation in Liberia is high, wage employment remains stagnant, indicating that vulnerable employment, characterized by informality and the absence of social security benefits, accounts for 78 percent of the workforce.
The World Bank report also quotes the International Labor Organization, stating that “the share of the workforce in vulnerable employment in Liberia is as high as 78 percent, while the share of wage employment has stagnated at around 20 percent over the past two decades.”
It is important to clarify that the data presented in this report represent trends in the labor market in Liberia up to 2023 and do not represent 2024 and 2025.
Conclusion
Based on these findings, we conclude that Al Hussein Fadiga’s claim is incorrect.
The World Bank report reveals that 78 percent of Liberia’s workforce is engaged in informal or vulnerable employment, and not 78 percent of the entire population, as claimed by Fadiga.
According to the World Bank and standard labor statistics, the workforce of a country refers to the labor force, or the group of people in a country who are able and available to work and are either employed or actively seeking employment.
This implies that 78% of this group of people are found in the informal sector in Liberia and not the entire population.
