Staff Reporter :
Youth unemployment in Bangladesh will continue to be high-more than double the national unemployment rate-with university graduates being the hardest hit, according to the World Employment and Social Outlook (WESO) report released on Wednesday by the International Labour Organization (ILO).
“The global contraction of jobs is of grave concern, especially for Bangladesh, which is undergoing political, economic, social, and climatic transitions and sends over a million workers abroad,” said Tuomo Poutiainen, the outgoing country director for the ILO in Bangladesh.
Tuomo Poutiainen also urged Bangladesh to move forward with its skills development reform to adequately equip its labour force for more specialized, better paying jobs both in the country and abroad.
The ILO identified geopolitical tensions and trade disruptions as key factors weakening the economic outlook, leading to slower job growth.
At its outlook, the ILO has revised its global employment forecast for 2025, projecting the creation of 53 million jobs instead of the previously estimated 60 million. This translates into a reduction in global employment growth from 1.7 per cent to 1.5 per cent this year.
The drop – which is the equivalent of around seven million fewer additional jobs – reflects a downgraded global economic outlook, as GDP growth is expected at 2.8 per cent, down from a previous projection of 3.2 per cent.
In addition, the ILO estimates that close to 84 million jobs across 71 countries are directly or indirectly tied to U.S. consumer demand. These jobs – and the incomes they support – are now increasingly at risk of disruption due to elevated trade tensions. The Asia-Pacific region is where most of these jobs – 56 million – are concentrated. Canada and Mexico, however, have the highest share of jobs – 17.1 per cent – that are exposed.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s unemployment rate rose to 4.63 per cent in the second quarter of fiscal year 2024-25, as a growing number of job seekers failed to secure employment, according to the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey data from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), published recently.
The jobless rate stood at 3.95 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to the BBS.
