BD’s True Unemployment Rate Could Be 5.9%

Between January 2023 and March 2024, 128 new readymade garment (RMG) factories joined BGMEA, potentially creating 74,000 jobs if fully operational. In the same 15-month period, 113 member factories shut down, displacing 96,104 workers—76,504 of them after August 2023 alone.

Women’s participation in STEM fields in Bangladesh stands at only 21%, significantly lower than India (43%), Sri Lanka (41%), and Indonesia (37%), despite women constituting 42% of the overall workforce. Experts stress the need for policy reforms, stronger academia-industry collaboration, and inclusive business models to boost women’s STEM involvement.

Bangladesh's private sector faces a deepening crisis as credit growth drops to a four-year low of 7%, and capital machinery imports fell by 34% in FY25. With 95% of the workforce employed in the private sector, businesses are halting expansion plans, exacerbating youth unemployment, especially among tertiary-educated individuals, whose unemployment rate rose from 9.7% in 2013 to 27.8% in 2022.

Bangladesh may lose 4.8% of working hours by 2030 due to heat stress, while 17% of its land could be submerged by 2050, displacing 20 million people, according to a study by FSG. The garments and construction sectors, contributing 34% of GDP and employing 12 million people, generate 15% of national emissions, projected to rise 5% by 2030.

Bangladesh's labour statistics rely on outdated standards from the 13th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS) of 1982, instead of the updated 19th ICLS from 2013, leading to understated unemployment figures.

In 2023, over 1 lakh new graduates joined the job market in Bangladesh, contributing to a total of 9.06 lakh unemployed tertiary graduates, up from 7.99 lakh the previous year, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.