Summary: What’s new in WDI?
The “What’s New” series will accompany the updates of World Development Indicators database going forward. The goal is to provide clear information about which indicators have been added, updated, or removed in the database and details about these changes to help people make better use of the data.
Previous WDI update summaries were published on the World Bank Data Help Desk.
January 2025 update: On January 28, 2025, the World Development Indicators database was updated to incorporate the latest estimates for the following indicators: greenhouse gas emissions, labor market modeled ILO estimates, purchasing power parity data for European Union countries, scientific articles, medium and high-tech product shares in exports and value added, private investment in infrastructure, arms trade, military spending, and battle related deaths.
1. Data updates
On January 28, 2025, the World Development Indicators (WDI) database was updated. This release features the latest data for:
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▪ Greenhouse gas emissions such as Total greenhouse gas emissions including LULUCF, greenhouse gas emissions excluding LULUCF, Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (total) excluding LULUCF, and Methane (CH4) emissions (total) excluding LULUCF, among others. (LULUCF stands for land use, land-use change, and forestry).
For information on the most recent methodological update for the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) indicators, please see the Methodological Updates section. For a detailed description on the new GHG series which are replacing the previous emissions indicators in WDI, please refer to the December release note (the New Indicators section).
- ▪ Labor Market (ILO modeled estimates) including Labor force participation rate, total (% of total population ages 15-64), Unemployment (% of labor force), and Employment to population ratio, ages 15-24, total (%) (modeled ILO estimate).
For information on the most recent methodological update for the ILO modeled estimates indicators, please see the Methodological Updates section.
▪ Other indicators: such as conversion factors sourced from Eurostat, arms imports and exports (trend indicator values published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) and military spending (current USD).
A list of indicators included in this update can be accessed here and the data is available through the Open Data site, DataBank, the Data
Catalog, and via API.
2. Methodological updates
Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG)
The Commission’s Joint Research Center (JRC) has published a new version of the greenhouse gas emissions database, EDGAR_2024_GHG, which includes data for the year 2023 and updates some of the underlying data sources. These updates can result in changes to data points for previous years for the GHG related indicators, such as “Total greenhouse gas emissions excluding LULUCF (Mt CO2e)”. See the EDGAR site for a full list of updates of EDGAR_2024_GHG with respect to the previous version EDGAR v8.0.
Labor Market (ILO modeled estimates)
The labor market data based on ILO modeled estimates in WDI were updated following the latest release by ILO in November 2024. As in previous years the latest update may reflect different historical trends compared to previous releases, due to methodological adjustments. One notable change is the treatment of India’s Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data. While the 2023 edition incorporated PLFS data for 2020, 2021, 2022, and the first half of 2023, older data from 2018 and 2019 were excluded due to issues related to comparability with previous National Sample Survey (NSS) results and the newer PLFS results. The November 2024 update revised this approach by incorporating NSS and PLFS data points, excluding data from 2018 and 2019, and by applying a smoothing function to reduce year-to-year variability and enhance the international comparability of the estimates. Taking into consideration India's population size, these adjustments significantly influence the global aggregates.
Other methodological updates in the 2024 edition include enhanced granularity in labor force participation rate breakdowns, the discontinuation of certain detailed age models to ensure consistency, and adjustments in unemployment estimates. The ILO has also incorporated COVID-19-related variables into its econometric models to better capture pandemic-driven labor market disruptions.
For more information on the methodological overview and updates on ILO modeled estimates November 2024 edition, please refer to the ILO modelled estimates methodological overview.