How many scientists are there?

Every country is home to scientists. But how many are there in total?

Who counts as a scientist?

Calculating the exact number of scientists is a bit tricky. Should you just look at researchers at universities or include researchers in firms, too? What about scientists who work in labs and their assistants? To make matters more complicated, the number of scientists is always changing, for example because people switch careers.

8.8 million

Yet estimates have been made. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) has calculated that the Netherlands has around 166,000 people working in ‘research and development’.

UNESCO, part of the United Nations, analysed research figures from almost two hundred countries and found that the world is home to around 8.8 million scientists.

A whole lot more

But it’s not as simple as that. The figures by Statistics Netherlands and UNESCO don’t relate to numbers of people, but to numbers of full-time jobs. If two scientists each work half a week, they jointly represent one full-time job and count as one single scientist. But in reality, they’re still two people. So that means there are way more than 166,000 scientists in the Netherlands or 8.8 million worldwide.

Answered by Jean-Paul Keulen