Jobs are the most reliable way to reduce poverty and provide people with hope for a better future. To achieve this, countries must build economies that create opportunities and translate growth into local employment. Yet despite advances in technology, the world’s poorest remain largely disconnected from the digital tools that now drive labor markets, agricultural productivity, and economic mobility. Without access, digital technologies cannot help reduce poverty.
The digital divide remains vast. While cellphone ownership is nearly universal, access to the internet and computers is highly unequal. Among people living in extreme poverty—those earning less than $3 per day—only 16 percent have internet access, and computer ownership is almost nonexistent. Even households above the extreme poverty line but below upper-middle-income thresholds face limited connectivity, with just half able to access the internet and one in eight able to reach a computer. Connectivity matters because it drives economic outcomes: evidence from Tanzania, Nigeria, and Jordan shows that internet access increases employment, wages, household consumption, and participation in markets, particularly benefiting women and farmers.
Barriers to digital access hit the poorest hardest. Cost remains a primary obstacle, with extreme-poverty households spending more than five percent of their consumption on internet access—five times the relative burden of non-poor households. Energy poverty affects at least 1.18 billion people, making electricity—a prerequisite for digital tools—unavailable. Even when infrastructure exists, limited digital literacy prevents effective use. Rural populations, households headed by people with only primary education, and agricultural workers face the most severe exclusions from the digital economy.
The implications for employment are critical. Seventy percent of the global extreme-poverty population works in agriculture, often in smallholder or informal roles, while eighty percent engage in independent or unpaid work. Access to digital tools could improve market participation, productivity, and technology adoption, creating substantial poverty reduction opportunities. With over a billion young people entering the workforce in developing countries over the next decade, expanding digital inclusion is essential to meet employment needs and close the jobs gap.
Digital technologies can help farmers earn better prices, workers find employment, and entrepreneurs reach new markets—but only if access reaches the poorest and most vulnerable. For development efforts focused on job creation, ensuring inclusion in the digital economy is not optional; it is critical to reducing poverty and expanding economic opportunity.
