Global labor force: where'd the missing 1.5 billion go?

[Junghalli]

I was reading this and I noticed something:

Between 1996 and 2006, the global labour force, consisting of people who were
either working or looking for work, had grown by 16.6 per cent, to 2.9 billion,
based on International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates.1 That labour
force represented about two thirds of the 4.6 billion people of working age (aged
15 years or over) in 2006.

Over the same period, the unemployment rate worldwide rose from about
6.0 to 6.3 per cent. The number of unemployed worldwide rose to 195 million
people in 2006, from 161.4 million in 1996 (see figure I.1).

That leaves about 1.5 billion people missing. I don't think they're talking about small-scale farmers in developing countries either, cause they talk about agriculture later:

Agriculture still accounts for about 45 per cent of the world’s labour force, or
about 1.3 billion people. In developing countries, about 55 per cent of the labour
force is in agriculture, with the figure being close to two thirds in many parts of
Africa and Asia.

I guess this is mostly housewives and family/dependents of subsistence farmers who work for them on an informal basis like such people have been doing since forever?

It fits with what they say about gender:

The gap between
men and women continued: in 2006, 48.9 per cent of women were employed,
compared with 74.0 per cent of men, and in 1996, 49.6 per cent of women were
employed, compared with 75.7 per cent of men.

I'm kind of curious about this, a few quick Google searches didn't turn up anything enlightening, anybody have any input to offer on the subject?

[Dominus Atheos]

Besides women, it's also the retired/too old to work. That 4.6 estimate says 15 and over, so it's counting all elderly and disabled people too.

[StarSword]

^What he said. The economist definition of "labor force" is very specifically the portion of the population that is either employed or unemployed and searching. If you're not at least looking for work, you don't count.