Today, modern slavery produces 37% more economic benefits than ten years ago and affects more people than ten years ago.

These are the main conclusions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in the second edition of its report Profits and poverty: The economics of forced labour.

According to the UN special agency, over the past decade, profits from the exploitation of human beings have reached around 64 billion dollars each year.

The first report in 2014 showed that human traffickers could earn up to $8,270 for each victim, now they do not get below $10,000.

At the same time, more and more people have been trafficked and exploited. For example, 27.6 million people were exploited daily in 2021, 2.7 million more than five years earlier.

The report points out that “total illegal profits from forced labour appear to have risen dramatically over the last decade, as a result of both more people in forced labour and higher levels of profit being generated from each victim”.

Sexual exploitation

Among the different forms of forced labour, the report identifies sexual exploitation as the illegal activity that yields the highest profit per victim for traffickers and criminals, with a total of $27,252 per exploited person.

In some cases victims do not even receive financial compensation because “they must repay a debt to their smuggler, allegedly as a result of being trafficked”, says the ILO.

Furthermore, “the fact that sexual exploitation is illegal in most countries means that victims have limited or no recourse to justice”.

Different kinds of coercion

The ILO also reports that exploitation occurs through various forms of coercion. The most common is “systematic and deliberate withholding of wages”, which reportedly affects 36% of those who are exploited.

That is followed by “abuse of vulnerability by threat of dismissal”, which is experienced by 1 in 5 victims. Other less common forms of coercion include physical and sexual violence, forced confinement and deprivation of basic needs.

You can read the full report here