Jobless growth a great concern for Bangladesh

Jobless growth has been a topic of great concern for Bangladesh for years now. Even though the country’s economy has shown considerable growth over the years, what is now increasingly clear is that it has failed to promote the requisite growth in jobs. In truth, the largest segment of employment comes only from garment industries, an estimated 85 per cent of the export earners.

With the increased automation in the production process of the RMG sector, the number of people employed there is on the decline. Leaders of the sector also voiced their concern that wages of workers are not being cheap anymore. Thus, the companies are moving towards automation making some functions in the industry redundant for workers. BBS (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics) sources say, currently there are 73.40 million labour forces in the country. Of them, there are 47.40 million men and 25.90 women. Presently, around 2.63 million people have no jobs, it says.

Unfortunately, as the latest research data shows, employment in the industrial sector fell by 17 per cent last year which was 20.4 per cent in 2017. However, its contribution to GDP went up to 36.9 per cent from 32.5 per cent during the same period. On the other hand, agriculture’s contribution to the GDP has been on a general downturn over the years from 14.1 per cent in 2017 to 11.6 per cent in 2022. It is seen that employment in that sector has risen by a significant 40.6 per cent in 2017 to 45.3 per cent in 2022. The havoc Covid-19 uprooted millions from urban areas and forced them to go back to the rural areas they hailed from. Now it seems many did not come back to work for industry and got engaged in agriculture. But mechanisation is increasingly becoming a mainstay there too. This is unavoidable.
In an increasingly volatile economic situation, the authorities need to shift focus on creating rural-based economic activities. Economists have long been demanding the country to be divided into industrial and agricultural zones. They have been demanding that national plan for economic development can achieve stated goals in the national budget. Skills development to tap into foreign labour markets is another area that has not gotten proper policy support. Other countries in Asia are earning six to eight times what Bangladesh brings in inward remittances simply because their workers are much more skilled than ours. We demand that priority areas must be delineated in the government policies sooner than later.