Quick answer: Mozambique's unemployment rate is about 6.6% (2025, ILO modelled estimate published by the World Bank), which sounds low. But 83.7% of workers are in vulnerable employment, meaning self-employed or unpaid family workers with no contract or protection, and around 81% of people live below the World Bank's $3-a-day poverty line. In Mozambique the problem is not that people have no work. It is that their work does not pay enough to live on.
What is Mozambique's unemployment rate?
| Indicator | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Unemployment rate | 6.6% (2025) | World Bank WDI, ILO modelled estimate |
| Vulnerable employment (share of workers) | 83.7% (2025) | World Bank WDI, ILO modelled estimate |
| Population below $3 a day (2021 PPP) | about 81% | World Bank Mozambique Economic Update, March 2026 |
| National poverty rate | 62.9% (2022) | World Bank |
Sources: unemployment and vulnerable employment from World Bank WDI; poverty from the World Bank Mozambique overview and the IGC, citing the March 2026 Economic Update. Modelled estimates are not survey counts, so treat them as approximate.
Why is unemployment low but poverty high?
Because of how unemployment is measured. To count as unemployed, you must have no work at all and be looking for a job. In a country with no unemployment benefits, very few people can afford that. Almost everyone does something: farms a small plot, sells at a market, takes day labor. All of that counts as employment, even if it earns a few dollars a week.
$25 plants a farmer's season in Zambézia.
Paid straight to the local seed shop. You get the receipt, a field photo and a harvest update.
A gift, not an investment. Not tax-deductible.
The real problem: underemployment and working poverty
- Underemployment: people who work fewer hours than they want, or whose skills are unused.
- Working poverty: people who work full days and still live below the poverty line.
- Vulnerable employment: own-account and family workers who have no contract, pension or insurance. In Mozambique that is more than 8 in 10 workers.
Most of these workers are smallholder farmers and informal traders. A farmer who loses a harvest to drought is still "employed" in the statistics.
Why it matters
- Policy: a low unemployment rate can make the jobs problem look solved when it is not.
- Donors and investors: the real gap is productivity and income, not just job counts.
- Families: what changes lives is earning more from the work people already do.
What raises earnings for people already working
- Better farm inputs at planting time: seed, fertilizer and tools
- Access to markets and storage, so harvests sell at fair prices
- Savings groups and mobile money, so one bad week doesn't wipe out a family
- Skills linked to real demand in farming, trades and services
How MBC helps
MBC focuses on the biggest group of underemployed workers: smallholder farmers. A sponsorship pays a named farmer's local seed and fertilizer shop (92%), with 8% for field verification, and you receive the receipt and a harvest update. Sponsor a farmer from $25, or read What Is the Informal Sector? and Youth Unemployment in Africa.
Sponsorships are gifts, not investments, and are not tax-deductible.
Sources: World Bank WDI via Statistics of the World: unemployment · vulnerable employment · World Bank Mozambique overview · IGC, Mozambique: one of the world's poorest countries (June 2026)