A recent job fair in Dhaka painted a grim picture of Bangladesh’s unemployment crisis, particularly among educated youth. Organized last week by career platform Nextjobs, the fair brought together 75 companies offering a total of 374 vacancies. The response was overwhelming: around 20,000 graduates submitted CVs, meaning more than 50 candidates competed for each position. One company told a correspondent it received over 200 applications for just two vacant posts.
If competition for private-sector jobs is this intense, the race for government jobs is even more cutthroat. Recent newspaper reports highlight the gravity of the situation. One report notes that a government office in Pabna advertised vacancies for 18 low-ranking posts requiring only an eighth-grade or SSC-level qualification. Those ultimately hired were BSC engineers, MBAs, and postgraduates. Another report says more than 1.2 million applicants, mostly graduates and post-graduates, applied for just 312 third-class jobs under the Ministry of Social Welfare.
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The question is why university degree holders are so desperate for even low-ranking government jobs. One reason could be the safety and security that government employment offers, while another is the soaring unemployment rate. At the same time, employers often complain that fresh graduates lack the skills they are looking for. This points to a deeper issue: many youths are leaving universities with degrees but without the practical skills needed to secure decent employment.
Employment is closely linked to economic growth, and Bangladesh has been witnessing high unemployment since the Covid-19 pandemic, when the economy came to an abrupt halt. When the pandemic was brought under control and the economy was turning around, the Russia-Ukraine war dealt another blow. Corruption, plundering of financial institutions, and money laundering also plunged the economy into serious trouble.
Frustration over bleak job prospects was one of the main reasons behind the mass uprising of July 2024. Ironically, the situation apparently worsened during the tenure of the interim government, as hundreds of factories closed due to labour unrest, politically motivated retaliatory attacks on factories, abrupt hikes in bank loan interest rates, and other factors. The current BNP government, which promised to create 10 million jobs, has announced incentives to reopen closed factories and taken measures to revive state-owned jute and sugar mills through private investment.
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Efforts are also underway to reduce bank lending rates and simplify business regulations in a bid to encourage private investment and spur job creation. But external shocks, such as the conflict in the Middle East and rising global energy prices, along with domestic gas and electricity shortages, remain major drags on private investment and economic recovery. The energy crisis alone has made it harder for factories to operate at full capacity, which in turn limits their ability to hire.
The government must therefore take all-out measures to overcome the energy crisis and improve the investment climate. Without significant acceleration in private investment, unemployment will remain high, which may well create the conditions for another wave of youth-led movements. Curricula also need to be devised in a way that prepares young people for an AI-driven world, where desk-bound and manually repetitive jobs will shrink while demand for technically skilled workers grows. A supportive environment for aspiring entrepreneurs, including access to soft loans and simplified business registration, can also go a long way towards tackling unemployment.
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