Though most people who have health insurance in America get their coverage through their employer, the formation of the federal and state-based exchanges provide individuals with another opportunity to gain coverage if they'd prefer to purchase it on their own or are unemployed.
However, while the jobless rate in America is slowly improving – falling to 6.2 percent in July from 9 percent during the same month in 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics – there is still a high number of people worldwide who aren't gainfully employed, based on the results of a recent survey.
Of the more than 7 billion people in the world, only 1.3 billion worked on a full-time basis in 2013, polling research firm Gallup revealed. That's the equivalent of about 1 in 4 adults. For the study's purposes, "full-time" is defined by those who work at least 30 hours per week.
United Arab Emirates with highest percentage of full-time workers
In order to arrive at the findings, Gallup performed more than 136,000 interviews in 136 different countries. Last year, the United Arab Emirates had the highest payroll to population rate, giving the Middle-Eastern country the distinction of having the largest percentage of residents in the full-time workforce. Iceland was second at 54 percent, followed by Bahrain and Sweden tied at 53 percent. Russia rounded out the top five at 51 percent. The U.S. finished 10th with a payroll to population rate of 43 percent.
Between 2009 and 2013, the P2P rate has hovered right around 24 percent. In 2011, it peaked at 27 percent but has since declined to about 26 percent, Gallup revealed.
Gallup deputy director Jon Clifton and methodologist Ben Ryan, who conducted the poll, noted that these findings fly in the face of what the International Labor Organization has reported.
"According to the ILO, 200 million people worldwide were unemployed in 2013," the researchers noted in the study. "This number grossly misrepresents the global jobs situation."
They added that because unemployment analysis often doesn't take into account specific factors – such as those who have left the workforce entirely or are self-employed – many countries that report a low jobless rate are actually higher, such as in Pakistan, China and Thailand.
Work hard to come by in Burkina Faso
On the opposite end of the spectrum are the countries with a low P2P rate. At 5 percent, Burkina Faso – which is located in Western Africa – had the lowest in 2013. Just 6 percent of Haiti's population worked full-time in 2013, tied with Malawi and Niger. Ethiopia had the fifth lowest at 7 percent, meaning that four of the five countries with the lowest P2P rates were in Africa last year.
These numbers may provide business owners with some perspective on what people in other countries do in order to get coverage. According to a separate study from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, consumer-driven health plans are gaining popularity among enrollees, evidenced by a high satisfaction rate. Meanwhile, sentiment has been on the decline among traditional plans.
