Thirty-six percent of educated young people in Bangladesh are unemployed, according to a report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The report, published in the September issue of the IMF’s Finance & Development magazine, said youth unemployment is high across Asia, with the highest rates recorded among more highly educated young people.
The IMF said artificial intelligence (AI) could boost economic growth and productivity. However, if AI adoption outpaces skills development, the technology could put additional pressure on young workers in the labour market.
The report also highlighted educated youth unemployment rates in several Asian countries, including India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines.
Fahim Mashroor, founder and managing director of Bdjobs.com, one of Bangladesh’s leading online job platforms, said that the number of bachelor’s degree holders has increased significantly over the past two decades.
In 2010, only 3.9% of the labour force held bachelor’s degrees. By 2022, the figure had risen to 9%, more than doubling in 12 years.
However, the job market has changed little, while the country’s economic structure has also remained largely unchanged. New industries have not emerged at a pace sufficient to absorb the growing number of graduates, Mashroor said.
According to him, around 2.2–2.3 million young people enter Bangladesh’s labour market each year, including about 750,000 university graduates.
The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics’ (BBS) 2024 Labour Force Survey found 2.624 million unemployed people in the country, including 2.032 million aged 15–29. Nearly 29% of the unemployed were highly educated or held bachelor’s degrees.
BBS data also show that more than 17% of highly educated young jobseekers remain unemployed for over two years, while more than 15% remain unemployed for one to two years. In other words, roughly one in three highly educated young people remains unemployed for more than a year.
According to the IMF report, 43% of educated youth in Sri Lanka are unemployed, while the rate in India exceeds 40%. The rate is above 20% in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines.
The IMF said highly educated young people are struggling to find jobs that match their qualifications. As AI use expands across Southeast Asian labour markets, concerns are growing that opportunities for highly skilled workers could decline in the coming years.
The issue, however, extends beyond unemployment figures, the IMF said. A persistent mismatch remains between the skills demanded by available jobs and those possessed by graduates.
With AI models now capable of performing many complex tasks at little or no cost, businesses may have less need for salaried entry-level technical positions, according to the IMF.
The IMF estimates that nearly 1.2 billion people will enter the labour force in developing economies over the next decade. More than half a century ago, around 500 million young people in emerging-market and developing economies were preparing to enter the workforce.
A World Bank report, The Global Jobs Challenge, published in June, said these young people are likely to constitute the largest youth group in history. Their numbers are expected to exceed those of any previous decade and surpass projections for every remaining decade of this century.