Youth workforce slides, unemployment climbs

Bangladesh's youth labour force is shrinking, according to official data, as the total workforce has been estimated at 25.92 million in the first quarter of 2024.

In the January to March period of the current calendar year, the youth workforce aged between 15 to 29 has fallen by 1.46 million compared to the same period in 2023, according to the statistics bureau's Quarterly Labour Force Survey released on Monday.

According to the Quarterly Labour Force Survey, the annual youth workforce was at 26.82 million in the calendar year 2022 and 26.74 million in the calendar year 2023.

The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) has conducted the latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey based on a population of 172.94 million, with an estimated 73.75 million in the labour force.

Of them, 71.16 million are employed in the first quarter this year, with the remaining unemployed. The employed population comprises 48.45 million males and 25.30 million females.

The unemployment rate has risen on a quarterly basis, from 2.35 per cent in the fourth quarter of the calendar year of 2023 to an estimated 3.51 per cent in the first quarter of 2024.

The BBS survey shows 0.24 million more people unemployed in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. This translates to a current unemployment figure of 2.59 million, up from 2.35 million in the last quarter of 2023.

The BBS defines unemployment according to the International Labour Organization (ILO) criteria: those willing to work but not having worked for at least an hour in the past seven days and actively seeking paid work in the past 30 days are considered unemployed.

The unemployment rate for both men and women in Bangladesh has also risen in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the last quarter of 2023.

The male unemployment rate rose to 3.59 per cent in Q1 2024, up from 3.27 per cent in Q4 2023. The BBS data shows a similar increase for females, with the unemployment rate reaching 3.36 per cent in Q1 2024 compared to 3.06 per cent in Q4 2023.

The overall national unemployment rate in Q1 2024 was 3.51 per cent, according to the latest labour survey.

The survey data shows a rise in the number of unemployed men.

Year-on-year, the number of jobless men increased by 2 per cent to 1.74 million in the January-March period of 2024, compared to 1.71 million a year earlier.

However, the number of unemployed women has declined. There was a 3 per cent year-on-year decrease to 0.85 million unemployed women at the end of March 2024, down from 0.88 million in 2023.

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