Bangladesh has long grappled with rising unemployment rates for the past few years, with the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbating the phenomenon even further. However, it is our rising youth unemployment issues which has the potential to completely upend the economy unless the necessary steps are taken to curb it.
The job market in the country has been incredibly rocky for some time now, but it has been even more so this year due to the cumulative effects of persistent issues such as our historically problematic business climate, lack of any meaningful investment, and inflation which has ostensibly been getting worse by the minute. This has led to the private sector’s complete state of stagnancy, which in turn means fewer jobs available for all despite more and more graduates entering the arena.
According to stats from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the beginning of 2024 saw close to 1,000,000 unemployed graduates head to the job market. On the other hand, credit growth for the private sector -- which picks up the majority of the slack left by a very limited amount of jobs in the public sector -- shrank to 8.30% going by the central bank’s official statistics, the lowest this figure has been since May 2021.
These are troubling numbers to be sure, however the problem does not only lie with the market itself but there is also an apparent mismatch in employability and market demands with candidates far too often lacking in terms of technical knowledge, at least according to the white paper panel that assessed the current state of the economy.
As things stand, there number of unemployed youth in Bangladesh stands at nearly 2 million, with 78.9% aged between years 15 to 29. These are the years when a youth is supposed to have a firm understanding of work and, ideally, would be given the kind of chances which would define their future career.
Where the previous government sat on some of the most pressing issues which contributed to the status quo regarding unemployment, the current government now has to contend with the added problems of decaying law and order and political instability on top of those. But tackle these issues it must, as the only way forward is through.
