Introducing the Labour Rights Index 2026: What’s New in Global Labour Laws and Regulations

Discover how the upcoming 2026 edition expands coverage to 168 countries, upgrades its methodology, and tracks key legal reforms worldwide.

15 September 2026

Countries from Mali to India rewrote their labour laws in the last two years to close old gaps in areas such as sexual harassment protections, maternity protection, flexible work, and equal access to jobs, finds the Labour Rights Index 2026. The de jure index, which measures key aspects of labour regulations affecting workers across the employment life cycle, will be released by WageIndicator Foundation on 6 October 2026. You can join the launch of the Labour Rights Index 2026 at this link.

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Labour Rights Index 2026: Key Law Changes and Improvements

  • From 1 January 2024 to 1 January 2026 (the cut-off date for the 2026 edition), the index registered 60 total adjustments across indicator scores.
  • Within these, 17 nations enacted favourable legal changes in 32 separate instances.
  • In most of these countries, the improvements didn't come from tweaks to old laws but through entirely new legislation. While Mali enacted a new sexual harassment prohibition, and India started implementing four new labour codes from November 2025 – three key improvements being equal job access for women, mandatory written contracts, and narrower hazardous-work restrictions on women.
  • Other instances include Lebanon adding a clear provision on the right to request flexible work.
  • Twelve countries saw their scores rise after updating their wage floors over the past two years following a period of stagnation in 2022 and 2024. In 11 countries, scores dropped because they did not update their minimum wages during the past 24 months.
  • Five nations – Argentina, Guinea, India, Lesotho, and Madagascar – introduced legislative changes that frustrated workers’ rights.

In general, “there’s a march toward improvement rather than decline. Legislation in most countries is improving, which suggests that is the legislature’s intent,” says Iftikhar Ahmad, Lead Researcher for the Labour Rights Index.

“Enforcement remains a separate problem, especially in developing countries, but the first step is having clear, loophole-free legislation that's easy for workers, employers, and labour inspectors alike to understand. Not every employer has the resources to hire lawyers or HR staff to help them comply, so clarity matters.”

Freedom of Association remains the weakest indicator globally, and is expected to stay that way given revised methodology based on ILO supervisory sources, adds Ahmad.

Legal reforms and law changes

Expanded coverage and methodology upgrade

The Labour Rights Index 2026 will cover the labour laws of 168 countries, up from 145 two years ago, including six new African countries plus additions from the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

It also has a more robust methodology, with the index now more tightly linked to United Nations Human Rights Treaties and not just the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions. For the first time, the index also draws upon the supervisory reports of ILO’s Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR) and the Committee on Freedom of Association’s Digest of Decisions.

This makes the scoring more robust by catching cases where a law looks compliant on paper but isn't in practice. For example, the labour law in a country might allow the right to strike but require 70% of workers to maintain minimum services, leaving only 30% free to strike, which effectively removes the right to strike.

The Labour Rights Index has 10 indicators which are further subdivided into 48 components. The 2026 edition will see a bunch of specific changes to indicators to expand coverage and improve the consistency and precision of scoring.

In Indicator 10, Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining, a new sub-indicator on social dialogue – which ensures that workers and employers are consulted on labour law reforms and labour market regulation – has been added. Similarly, a new sub-indicator on childcare services – which matters for supporting employment, especially for women – has been added in Indicator 4 on Family Responsibilities.

The indicator on Maternity Protection (Indicator 5) has been redesigned to combine two questions into one (level of maternity benefits and who pays for maternity leave). This is important because when employers have to bear the cost, it likely contributes to low female labour force participation.

In Indicator 6 (Safe Work), a new question has been added on whether a worker has the right to leave the workplace or refuse to return if there's a serious and imminent danger. ILO conventions establish this as a basic right, and this has been added to identify how many countries guarantee it in law.

The parts pertaining to the platform economy in Indicator 8 (Fair Treatment) have been redesigned after the new ILO convention 193 was adopted earlier this year in June. Convention 193 establishes a framework to ensure that all digital workers, regardless of how their employers classify their status, can benefit from fundamental labour rights and protection.

Use cases for the Labour Rights Index 2026

If you are a worker, the Labour Rights Index is a useful tool for understanding the rights that exist in law. Even though individual employment contracts or collective agreements can vary, the law is always the starting point for understanding one’s rights. For trade unions and civil society organisations, the index is a comparative tool for understanding regional trends. It is useful, for instance, to make a case to the government that neighbouring countries have reformed on a given topic and why it is beneficial to do so too.

To get started, take a closer look at your country profile in the Labour Rights Index 2024, and see where your country stands.

Join us for the launch of the Labour Rights Index 2026

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