Bangladesh had 9 lakh unemployed graduates in 2024

Bangladesh had nearly 9 lakh unemployed graduates in 2024, as the unemployment rate among tertiary-level educated individuals rose slightly, according to the final report of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2024 released by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) yesterday.

The unemployment rate among graduates increased to 13.5 percent in 2024, up from 13.11 percent the previous year — the highest among all education levels.

However, in absolute numbers, the total number of unemployed graduates stood at 8.85 lakh, reflecting a decrease of 20,000 from the previous year.

Among unemployed graduates, over 20 percent were women, while the overall national unemployment rate stood at 4.48 percent last year.

On the other hand, unemployment among youths with education below the secondary level increased by over 1 lakh, bringing the total to 5.07 lakh.

In percentage terms, the unemployment rate in this group rose by 0.51 percentage points.

Fahmida Khatun, executive director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), said the situation is far from satisfactory.

She said that opportunities in both the government and private sectors have not expanded as expected, limiting overall business growth.

"The only real source of jobs is the government, and even there the numbers are limited, and not every year do those opportunities come through. That's why, logically speaking, under these conditions, employment growth cannot realistically be expected."

In terms of the economy, the only thing that has been achieved preliminarily is preventing a complete collapse, she said.

For example, efforts to bring inflation down, pursuing contractionary monetary policy, trying to stabilise the banking sector, and then, since there's little capital, attempting to rebuild reserves.

"From the freefall, a few indicators have been stabilised, so the economy has been somewhat prevented from falling into total disaster."

But alongside that, there are other issues. "Yes, GDP has grown, but that's misleading, because one of the main drivers of growth is investment — private and foreign investment. And that hasn't increased."

She questioned how employment can grow without investment.

And in the past year, there has not been the expected investment.

"Many other economic activities have also been disrupted in various ways. Some factories have come under attack, some have shut down. As a result, production has been hampered. That's why we see that GDP projections are now lower; GDP growth has slowed," she said.

"At this point, we're stuck in a kind of low-level equilibrium: GDP growth is down, inflation is gradually declining, but investment isn't increasing. Even though they say it's rising slightly, it was already extremely low before, so that tiny increase doesn't mean anything," Khatun said.

On top of that, the law-and-order situation has deteriorated, the cost of doing business remains high due to infrastructure weaknesses, high energy and fuel prices, and persistent corruption — all of this hasn't improved.

"Because inflation is high, the government and Bangladesh Bank are sticking to contractionary monetary policy, which has pushed interest rates up."