Afghanistan workers by selected industry; thousand people and share of total employment, 2020.
Afghanistan’s employment was concentrated in agriculture and services in 2020. Agriculture employed 2.541 million people, while other services employed 1.081 million. The eleven listed industries accounted for 5.674 million of 5.717 million employed people, or 99.2%. Agriculture and other services together represented 63.4% of employment.
| Rank | Entry | Value | Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Agriculture | 2.54M | 2020 |
| 2 | Other services | 1.08M | 2020 |
| 3 | Trade | 600K | 2020 |
| 4 | Construction | 526K | 2020 |
| 5 | Manufacturing | 458K | 2020 |
| 6 | Transport | 377K | 2020 |
| 7 | Mining | 46K | 2020 |
| 8 | Finance | 15K | 2020 |
| 9 | Information | 13K | 2020 |
| 10 | Real estate | 11K | 2020 |
| 11 | Electricity and water | 6K | 2020 |
Source 1: Employment by selected industry
Publisher: Asian Development Bank
Dataset/table: Employment by selected industry
Units: thousand persons
Date checked: 2026-07-19
Evidence: Provides 2020 employment counts by industry and the same-year employed total.
Values are thousand employed persons. The published industries account for 99.2% of employment, leaving a 43,000-person residual in unlisted or rounding categories.
The eleven published industry counts are ordered from highest to lowest. A same-publication employed total of 5.717 million supplies the denominator for contextual shares and the residual check.
Industry rows and the employed total use the same ADB publication, Afghanistan scope, 2020 period and thousand-person unit.
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