(Bloomberg) -- Forced labor in the private economy generates $236 billion in illegal profits every year, according to the International Labour Organization.

Its report, published on Tuesday in Geneva, reveals a 37% increase in such illicit gains between 2014 and 2021. The biggest share of the profit is account for by Europe and Central Asia, followed by Asia and the Pacific and the Americas.

“People in forced labor are subject to multiple forms of coercion, the deliberate and systematic withholding of wages being amongst the most common,” said ILO chief Gilbert Houngbo. “We now know that the situation has only got worse. The international community must urgently come together to take action.”

The report — Profits and Poverty: the economics of forced labor — estimates that traffickers and criminals are generating close to $10,000 per victim, up from an inflation-adjusted $8,269 a decade ago.

Some 27.6 million people were engaged in forced labor “on any given day in 2021,” the ILO said. “This figure translates to 3.5 people for every thousand people in the world.”

The ILO defines forced labor as work extracted under the menace of any penalty and for which people don’t offer themselves voluntarily.

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