For years, policymakers have touted the youthful population of Bangladesh as a lucrative bait for attracting foreign direct investment (FDI). That would certainly have worked had Bangladesh done something other than use that data as a slogan. For decades, economists had been pointing out that simply having a large, young population wasn't going to automatically transform the economy. Rather, that large segment of the populace had to be supported by pragmatic policies and transformed into a skilled productive workforce that could effectively be engaged in industry and commerce. A skilled workforce can work wonders on the international labour market because a white-collar worker earns many times more than a blue-collar worker and the annual inward remittance would have increased manifold.
These matters are hardly new but have become the focus of a new report published recently by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) titled 'The Asia Pacific Employment and Social Outlook 2024'. Labour productivity has direct correlation with Bangladesh aiming to become a high-income country in the year 2050. It has been stated that the country must increase its annual labour productivity by 1.5 per cent to achieve that target.
On the other hand, the population is also ageing fast. As pointed out in a report published in this newspaper recently, "While Bangladesh currently has the potential to reap massive demographic dividends from a youthful labour force, and investments are needed for modern skills and access to quality employment, it is important also to recognise that the aging population is also increasing rapidly with estimates that the country will transform into aging society in 2048". This is how Tuomo Poutiainen, ILO's Country Director for Bangladesh summarises the issue.
A closer look reveals that Bangladesh has actually achieved higher rates of economic growth despite not generating requisite employment on a year-to-year basis over the last decade or so and unemployment has remained a major problem for countries like Bangladesh. Recent media reports show that the higher education system is churning out around 0.8 million youths with degrees that apparently have little traction with market needs and a large portion of those graduates are joining the already unemployed population of millions of youths.
Against the backdrop of external labour markets, one after another, closing their doors to Bangladeshi workers, the situation is reaching a critical point. The 'job gap' points out that there are lots of job openings in areas where Bangladesh could step in to provide its presently-unskilled workers with requisite knowledge to take advantage of the situation. The country needs to seriously rethink its skills development agenda. While there is a national policy in place, the pace at which things need to move is much greater than what is in existence.
It is not simply overseas jobs. Rather the market needs to be opened up for national and international companies to come in to address the skill gap. However, only the government has the resources needed to formulate appropriate policies and develop the infrastructure for a nationwide network of training centres, specialised vocational institutes that millions can access to. Of course, policymakers need to be open-minded about foreign collaboration so that market-driven skill training is provided in these centres and not archaic ones.
As pointed out in the report, the total unmet need for employment is equivalent to about 164 million jobs in 2023. Women apparently cannot get jobs because they lack the skills needed to become caregivers in a region that is facing a major problem of an ageing population. So, palliative care should become a cornerstone in the skills development policy at national level. But is it gaining any traction in our policymaking? The fact that private sector-run homes for the elderly are sprouting up in urban centres like Dhaka points to the fact that the concept of joint family is now dead and buried for good. These elderly people need specialised care but the skills gap is gaping in Bangladesh. Indeed, the gap is gaping in other nations too.
This would explain why better-skilled women workers from neighbouring India who have the requisite training have been moving in great numbers to fill the ranks of healthcare facilities in the United Kingdom. These are prime examples of other countries transforming their workforces to cater to a global shortage of skilled personnel. This is very much reflected in the fact that hundreds of thousands of foreign workers are needed by domestic industry to run factories and commerce in Bangladesh, while millions of graduates can find no work. The disconnect between academic study and the formal-informal productive sectors in the economy need to be bridged and appropriate policies formulated at the national level, if policymakers are serious about moving the country on a higher trajectory of growth – one that is 'inclusive'.
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