Twenty-six percent of the world’s adult population was employed full time for an employer in 2012, down slightly from 27 percent a year ago. This decline reverses the upward trend in Gallup’s Payroll to Population (P2P) measure since the height of the global recession in 2009.

Gallup’s P2P metric estimates the percentage of the adult population aged 15 and older—not just those currently in the workforce—who are employed full time for an employer for at least 30 hours per week. Gallup does not seasonally adjust its P2P metric. Gallup does not count adults who are self-employed, working part time, unemployed, or out of the workforce as payroll-employed in the P2P metric.

The percentage of people working full time for themselves was 18 percent in 2012, a slight decline over 2011 (19%). Thirty-eight percent were out of the workforce (38%), up slightly more than 37 percent in 2011.

 …