The more the education, the higher the unemployment. Such a comment is very likely to draw mordant criticism. In reality the country is facing mammoth unemployment. The rate of unemployment is higher among the young men with higher education. Unemployment among the youth offers us a melancholy picture. After the wrap-up of the final stage of their education a great many youths with post-graduation degrees desperately try to land a job. But they are soon caught up in the morass of despair as jobs are something rare to find. In the ruthless competition the youths fail to procure jobs and become a burden on their families most of which lead a hard-scrabble existence with pecuniary difficulties.
In such insecure ambience the youths cannot be fully compos mentis when they cannot help their families financially. The rate of unemployment has increased at a time when higher number of graduates or master’s degree holders are coming out of universities and the economy is registering a slow growth. In the circumstances, people are inclined to ask how many jobs are being created every year? Every year more and more youths with post-graduation degrees ae joining the jobless queues. It is because the post-graduates and the number of jobs mismatch.
Persistent and high rates of youth unemployment expose deep structural weaknesses in an economy that has failed to translate its growth into more jobs. Instead of benefitting from the country’s development gains, crores of young people find themselves excluded from productive work, which creates frustration and undermines weakened social cohesion. The statistics paint an even starker picture of the employment situation. The Labour Force Survey-2024 of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) indicated that in 2024 the unemployment rate was 3.66 percent compared to 3.35 percent in 2023. Of this, the rate of literate unemployment is 4.17 percent. Unemployment among the educated is higher, indicating greater competition for jobs among educated people. Another striking fact is, although the unemployment rate appears low, youth unemployment and youth inactivity are very high.
Another critical issue is the immense pressure of public sector employment. For young Bangladeshis, government jobs are considered the only viable route to stability, recognition and social prestige. Moreover, the private sector has not been able to generate enough high-quality jobs to absorb new entrants since private investment remained stagnant for over a decade due to various policies and regulatory shortcomings. Most youths who find work end up informal, low paying and insecure employment. They earn too little to build a future and receive none of the benefits or protections that come with formal work.
If we cannot use our demographic dividend, the youth can go on to become a liability for a nation like us. People say there are not enough jobs, but the entrepreneurs ask where are the people for hire? These two opposite views show that the quality of education from the existing system does not match the requirements of the job market. On the other side, a massive number of foreigners work here in various industrial sectors owing to lack of technical hands among the local workforce.
We have, therefore, to build an education system based on the needs of various sectors of our economy. If we can develop our education system based on technical skill, unemployment will surely shrink.
