Only 26.4% of workers around the world have permanent work contracts, ILO says in its first annual report on the nature of jobs, covering 180 countries or 84% of the global workforce.
Of the remaining three-quarters of workers, around 13% have part-time or fixed-term employment contracts, and as many as 60.7% work without any contract, ILO said.
According to data from 2010, the largest part of workers without a permanent employment contract, as many as 91.47%, are from China.
In Croatia, according to available ILO data for 2012, workers without a permanent employment contract accounted for 33.5% of all workers.
ILO also points to a trend of frequent hiring for a fixed period of time, especially of women.
Traditional types of hiring have been giving way to increasingly present non-standard forms of employment, which in many cases is connected with the deepening of inequalities and growing poverty in many countries, according to ILO Secretary-General Guy Ryder.
The situation is additionally worsened by the fact that such trends could perpetuate a vicious circle of weak global demand and slow creation of new jobs, characteristic of the global economy and many markets in the post-crisis period, he said.
A possible solution is to encourage investment so as to increase employment and productivity while guaranteeing appropriately safe incomes for all categories of workers, he said.
The authors of the ILO report also point to the need to legally regulate employment so as to protect workers, notably those in non-standard categories of employment.