One of the fundamental flaws with Bangladesh’s policy-making has been that it is largely not based on evidence. This is why the recent move by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) to suspend the Labour Force Survey (LFS) is such a misstep, especially considering just how inextricable labour is to our overall economy.
According to reports, the survey, which is nothing if not a critical tool for understanding the employment landscape, has been halted due to the specific project underpinning it running out of money. This decision, while perhaps administratively logical to some, represents a profound failure of vision that will force the government to fly blind on one of the economy's most pressing issues.
Unlike the Consumer Price Index, the LFS is conducted on an ad-hoc project basis, which means that no project equals no data. This makes a vital national statistic being held hostage to temporary financial arrangements, a situation economists have warned against for years, indeed for decades.
To treat labour data as a secondary concern is to fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of economic growth. Gross Domestic Product and inflation figures are undoubtedly important, but they are incomplete without knowing how growth translates into jobs, incomes, and livelihoods for citizens. The LFS provides a fairly comprehensive picture of who is working, who is not, and what kind of work is being created.
How can the government design effective job creation schemes, tailor skills development programs, or address regional unemployment disparities without knowing the current reality? Without this data, policy becomes tantamount to a shot in the dark.
The proper allocation of budgets and the implementation of government projects has long been an Achilles’ heel for Bangladesh, but when it comes to invaluable data which corresponds to not just our labour but also our wider economic health, the suspension of any such projects should be non-negotiable.