A year without job security

Bangladesh is ending 2025 with little sign of recovery in its job market, as factory closures, mass layoffs, weak private investment and sluggish economic growth combined to deepen employment stress across both the formal and informal sectors. 

Joblessness has been a persistent problem for years and helped shape the mass uprising in August 2024 that led to the ouster of the Awami League-led government. A year and a half after that political changeover, employment indicators suggest expectations of a rebound have not been realised.

While full-year data are yet to be available, an internal government survey shows that nearly 245 factories shut down between August 2024 and July 2025, affecting around 100,000 workers.

During the same period, about 937 new factories began operations across Dhaka, Narayanganj, Narsingdi, Chattogram, Gazipur and Mymensingh, indicating that some investment took place despite the turbulence.

However, Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmmed, executive director of the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS), said these were mostly small-scale ventures.

"These were not large investments. Very few were large factories. What increased was the number of smaller, less significant units," he said.

"There has been no meaningful rebound," he added.

Export-oriented industries were hit hardest, along with their backward and forward linkages, Ahmmed said, citing the impact of the reciprocal tariff imposed by the United States, financial weakness and operational challenges.

As formal employment shrank, many displaced workers drifted into informal activities. "We are seeing a sharp rise in battery-run rickshaws and motorcycle ride-sharing drivers," said Ahmmed, who also headed the Labour Reform Commission.

The year saw several large factory shutdowns. In September, Nassa Group, one of the country's leading garment manufacturers, permanently closed its 16 factories in Dhaka, Gazipur, Chattogram and Cumilla after failing to sustain operations amid severe financial and operational crises following the ouster of the Awami League government.

The closures laid off more than 12,500 workers in the ready-made garment sector. The group's Chairman, Nazrul Islam Mazumder, who was close to the previous government, is now behind bars.

Beximco Group, another major industrial employer, also continued to shed jobs. In February, Beximco Limited announced fresh layoffs affecting nearly 8,000 workers across five manufacturing units at its industrial park in Gazipur, citing a lack of work orders.

This followed earlier layoffs of nearly 40,000 workers across 15 apparel units towards the end of 2024.

Similar to Nassa Group, Beximco Group Vice-Chairman Salman F Rahman is now in jail. Rahman was an influential adviser to the former prime minister and was arrested after the fall of the Awami League government.       

In response to factory closures and unpaid wages, the government adopted a firmer stance than in the past. For the first time, authorities initiated steps to issue Interpol Red Notices against owners who left the country without clearing workers' dues.

According to the Ministry of Labour and Employment, interest-free loans amounting to Tk 704.45 crore had been disbursed from the central fund and the Finance Division to clear outstanding dues at 11 companies, including Beximco and Nassa.

Nearly 33,000 workers at the Beximco Industrial Park and Beximco Group received payments, while 17,134 workers from the Nassa Group were also paid.

BILS Executive Director Ahmmed described these interventions as commendable but insufficient, arguing that a coordinated strategy was needed to prevent factory closures in the first place.

Weak investment further constrained job creation. Private sector credit growth fell to a four-year low of 6.23 percent in October 2025, down from 8.30 percent a year earlier, according to Bangladesh Bank data.

The slowdown reflected weak demand for capital machinery, limited business expansion and persistent operational challenges.

Online job market data offered limited relief.

Bdjobs.com reported that job postings declined during the first half of 2025 before improving slightly after July and August. In the first nine months of the year, postings rose to 60,312 from 55,372 in the same period a year earlier.

"Overall, 2025 has been a difficult year for job seekers," said AKM Fahim Mashroor, founder and chief executive officer of Bdjobs.com.

"On the Bdjobs platform, we saw a decline in job postings during the first six months of the year. The situation improved slightly after July and August, but the job market remains largely stagnant," he said.

Mashroor said the biggest challenge was for fresh graduates, as the number of entry-level jobs remained far below the number of graduates entering the labour market each year.

Some job seekers said government recruitment showed slight improvement.

 "The number of government job circulars was comparatively higher in 2025, as the previous year was marked by prolonged turbulence," said Abdul Mannan, a graduate student at Jahangirnagar University.

The publication of recruitment notices for several posts that had remained vacant for a long time generated renewed hope among job seekers, he said.

Yet competition remained intense.

"Almost every week, I sit for competitive job exams in Dhaka," said Md Ekramul Haque, a mathematics graduate from Sirajganj Government College. "But the competition is intense. Last week, I sat for an office assistant exam under the Ministry of Public Works, where there were only 161 posts, but more than one lakh candidates applied."

"Although there were some signs of recovery from the 2024 crisis early in the year, the economy soon lost steam," Rizwanul Islam, former special adviser for the employment sector at International Labour Organization, said.

"Continued declines in real wages created a double whammy for the poor and low-income groups," he said. "From jobless growth, we have now moved to a growthless and jobless economy. It is effectively a two-year holiday for the economy."

MA Razzaque, chairman of the Research and Policy Integration for Development (RAPID), said, "Generating employment has become a major challenge because the economy slowed significantly."

Manufacturing growth in earlier years failed to translate into meaningful job creation, and now manufacturing itself has weakened, leaving little scope for expansion while employment in the sector has declined, he said.

"There are two key problems: new employment is not being created, and existing employment is overwhelmingly informal, dominated by low-productivity activities. Graduate unemployment is also very high."

He said the next elected government would need direct state intervention in several areas to generate jobs in the short term, stressing that the state must become more effective.