Benin: despite 8.1% growth, large-company employment stalls at 0.2%

Employment growth at large companies in Benin slowed from 4.1% in 2024 to 0.2% in 2025, while gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 8.1%, compared with 7.5% a year earlier. This is one of the main discrepancies identified by the World Bank in its fourth edition of the Benin Economic Update, published in September 2026.

The decline in employment in agriculture and other services weighed on hiring at large companies. In these two sectors, employment had risen by 18.7% and 11.8% in 2024, before falling by 10.7% and 6% respectively in 2025. Employment in other manufacturing industries also fell by 2.9%.

Transport and trade hold up

Other activities continued to hire. Employment rose by 17% in transport, 7.9% in trade and 5.7% in construction. At the Glo-Djigbé industrial zone (GDIZ), total employment reached 22,798 in 2025, 28.8% more than in 2024.

The report distinguishes these sectoral trends from the employment trend across the economy as a whole. Over the past two decades, annual employment growth has averaged around 3.4%, but eight in ten new jobs are in self-employment. Wage employment accounted for 19.8% in 2024, compared with an average of 39.1% in the structural peer countries selected by the institution.

An economy still dominated by the informal sector

The World Bank indicates that informal employment accounted for 96.3% of total employment in 2022 and that only 9% of young people held wage employment in 2024. It also notes that agriculture employed 41.1% of workers in 2024, while the shift of labour into services took place mainly in low-productivity activities.

For 2026, the World Bank forecast in this September report growth of 7.8%. It stresses industrialisation, agri-food, formal services and access to reliable electricity to increase the share of wage jobs.

Source: World Bank, Benin Economic Update, 4th edition, September 2026.