It doesn’t take research to see what an acute turn unemployment has taken in Bangladesh. It can easily be predicted from looking at the crowd of youth in front of the manpower recruitment agencies, seeking to go overseas. If there were job opportunities in the country, the youth would not have become so desperate to go abroad.
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS)’s quarterly labour force survey in June said unemployed population in the country has increased by 150,000 (1.5 lakh) in a year.
Around 2 million to 2.2 million (20 lakh to 22 lakh) youth join the labour market in Bangladesh every year. Among them, 1.2 to 1.3 million (12 to 13 lakh) at best get employed in the domestic market.
About 85 per cent of them are employed in the minimum wages-based informal sector, while the rest of them go to decent jobs. And, around 800,000 to 900,000 (8 to 9 lakh) people go abroad every year. The rest do not have any job opportunities.
According the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) on an average 150 Bangladeshi citizens looking for work left the country every hour in 2023. One-third of all the new employment opportunities that are created for Bangladeshi people every year are abroad. Malaysia, Singapore or the Middle Eastern countries are the primary destinations for the less educated youths.
The number of Bangladeshi citizens who have moved to Europe sailing through the Mediterranean Sea between 2009 and 2024 is 106,598 (1 lakh 6 thousand and 598). The degree of unemployment in the country can be estimated just from this figure.
Without finding a decent job in the country and with the expectation of a better life a huge number of Bangladeshi youths are trying to immigrate to different European countries by crossing the Mediterranean Sea with risks. In fact the number of Bangladeshis detained in prisons abroad due to the lack of valid documents is also several hundred thousand.
Executive director of the non-government research organisation South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM) Selim Raihan told Prothom Alo that majority of the jobs are created in the private sector. However, there is a major failure in creating dignified employment.
The reason behind unemployment is that employment opportunities are not increasing at the same rate as the population is growing. There have been mega projects and the economic growth has been above seven per cent during the Awami League government’s regime. However, the private sector did not expand that much in comparison. Plus, the supply of electricity and fuel that are essential for the industries could not be ensured.
Although the government talked about establishing 100 economic zones, the work of construction for most of them has not even started yet. On the other hand, our education system is so outdated that it is failing to meet the requirements of the day. This is why, we spend foreign exchange to bring workers from abroad and our youths are left unemployed even after completing higher education.
According to BBS’s Key Findings of Sample Vital Statistics 2023 report, nearly 40 per cent of the young population is not in education, employment or training programmes. This rate among men is about 19 per cent while among women it is about 61 per cent. That is to say, a huge number of young men and women are living either in unemployment or in pseudo-unemployment.
If the unemployment rate is to be reduced in the country, there has to be an expansion in the industries and trade sectors. The economic zones have to be made fully operational. The education system has to be contemporized so that there is demand for the educated in the labour market. Plus, employment should be prioritised over growth in economic planning.
We are graduating from the status of a least developed country to a developing country. In that case, some new challenges will be added and the benefits that have been receiving from the development partners till now will be reduced. The interim government has taken the charge of reforming the state. Hopefully they will pay attention to reducing unemployment and increasing employment.