With 546 million members, LinkedIn may not be the largest social network (Facebook takes that honor with 2.2 billion users). But for most of the working world, LinkedIn is the go-to for business connections and job hunting. Recently, while exploring LinkedIn's publically available data, we found that we could now track LinkedIn's numbers on a country-by country basis. And there's an interesting story behind the numbers.
You might not be surprised to see that the United States, where LinkedIn was founded, is huge - just under 150 million users, for 44% total penetration of the US population. But today, 70% of LinkedIn users come from elsewhere around the globe. We thought it would be interesting to lay it all out in a handy, interactive map so you could see which countries are tops for LinkedIn engagement (and which ones have some connecting to do).
Scroll over each country with your mouse to view the data:
Even more impressive: According to Federal Reserve figures, the adult working population (ages 15 to 64) of the United States is currently 206,567,603 which means that LinkedIn's penetration among the workforce is a pretty amazing 69.5%.
(Note: Our cut-off was 2 million users, so some smaller countries with bigger penetration, like Iceland and Israel, didn't make the cut.)
For those of you who find it easier to parse data laid out in a table, here you go:
| Country | # LinkedIn Users | Total Population | Penetration |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 143,769,611.00 | 323,127,513.00 | 44% |
| India | 45,028,066.00 | 1,324,171,354.00 | 3% |
| China | 40,690,318.00 | 1,378,665,000.00 | 3% |
| Brazil | 32,670,764.00 | 207,652,865.00 | 16% |
| United Kingdom | 22,707,850.00 | 65,637,239.00 | 35% |
| France | 15,096,542.00 | 66,896,109.00 | 23% |
| Canada | 13,796,391.00 | 36,286,425.00 | 38% |
| Italy | 10,662,031.00 | 60,600,590.00 | 18% |
| Mexico | 10,345,173.00 | 127,540,423.00 | 8% |
| Spain | 9,497,236.00 | 46,443,959.00 | 20% |
| Australia | 8,432,412.00 | 24,127,159.00 | 35% |
| Indonesia | 8,115,050.00 | 261,115,456.00 | 3% |
| Russia | 7,563,138.00 | 144,342,396.00 | 5% |
| Germany | 7,244,136.00 | 82,667,685.00 | 9% |
| Netherlands | 6,796,731.00 | 17,018,408.00 | 40% |
| Colombia | 5,612,959.00 | 48,653,419.00 | 12% |
| Argentina | 5,288,419.00 | 43,847,430.00 | 12% |
| Turkey | 5,280,645.00 | 79,512,426.00 | 7% |
| South Africa | 5,075,844.00 | 55,908,865.00 | 9% |
| Philippines | 4,241,667.00 | 103,320,222.00 | 4% |
| Chile | 3,544,579.00 | 17,909,754.00 | 20% |
| Peru | 3,339,999.00 | 31,773,839.00 | 11% |
| Pakistan | 3,080,395.00 | 193,203,476.00 | 2% |
| Malaysia | 2,755,059.00 | 31,187,265.00 | 9% |
| Belgium | 2,656,061.00 | 11,348,159.00 | 23% |
| United Arab Emirates | 2,593,493.00 | 9,269,612.00 | 28% |
| Nigeria | 2,566,151.00 | 185,989,640.00 | 1% |
| Sweden | 2,528,751.00 | 9,903,122.00 | 26% |
| Venezuela | 2,447,100.00 | 31,568,179.00 | 8% |
| Poland | 2,204,109.00 | 37,948,016.00 | 6% |
| Portugal | 2,122,158.00 | 10,324,611.00 | 21% |
| Egypt | 2,059,863.00 | 95,688,681.00 | 2% |
| Ukraine | 2,028,512.00 | 45,004,645.00 | 5% |
LinkedIn hit the 500-million-user milestone in April of last year, and growth has been steady, although China and Russia slowed global growth by blocking LinkedIn at various points. The site ran afoul of China's censorship rules in 2011, and only emerged from the doghouse three years later with a specially-coded Chinese version. In 2016, Russia passed a law requiring all data kept on Russian nationals to be stored within the confines of Russia, and blocked LinkedIn for a time.
As for growth... we had to do some digging, but here's a snapshot of LinkedIn's global growth over the past five years:
Note: Data for historical chart sourced as follows:
- 2012 data from Socialbakers.com via RecruitingUnblog and LinkedIn
- 2013 data via Topdog
- 2014 data via SocialTalent.com
- 2016 numbers via Statista
- 2018 numbers from Thinknum
