Only reducing unemployment can get the job done

Bangladesh is on the precipice of graduating to the status of developing country after decades of languishing in the realm of least developed countries. While that growth has been admirable, given the increased challenges that attaining the developed status brings, it is high time that our leaders started taking a good look at just how our growth has been up to this point.

Experts have for the longest time warned Bangladesh, and indeed South Asia at large, of the perils of what is known as “jobless growth” -- wherein an economy undergoes growth without any meaningful expansion on the way of employment.
According to the World Bank's senior economist based in Bangladesh Bernard Haven, employment generation schemes which factor in the many vulnerable groups which exist within our population should be of the utmost importance at this juncture for the government. Speaking at a joint seminar hosted by the World Bank and the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling, the discussants further elaborated on how the importance of employment generation feeds directly into overcoming macroeconomic challenges.
Unemployment has long been an issue for Bangladesh, with the nation seeing nearly 800,000 unemployed university graduates by the end of 2022 according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. If the number of educated unemployed is that high, it stands to reason that the nation’s vulnerable population has it even worse.
It is a proven fact that the growth we have experienced over the past years has been anything but equitable. Adopting a non-zero employment rate should not be the target of a nation hoping to achieve middle income status in the near future, our leaders should be aiming to arm each and every member of the population with jobs tailored to their individual skill sets -- this requires investing in our education sector and finding ways to promote avenues such as vocational training.
At the end of the day, any growth that does not factor the population into account can hardly be considered true growth, reports DT.
Bangladesh needs to tackle its unemployment situation head-on.