Bangladesh's unemployment rate remained the highest at 3.66 per cent in 2024 in the last three years, according to the latest Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2024 report.
In 2023, the rate of jobless people in the country was 3.35 per cent and in the previous year (2022) it was 3.53 per cent, the final LFS 2024 report of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) revealed on Thursday.
The unemployment rate in urban areas was higher than that in the rural areas.
The jobless rate in towns was recorded at 4.40 per cent while the rate was 3.40 per cent in rural areas, the report showed.
According to the report, Bangladesh is the home of about 2.62 million unemployed people.
Meanwhile, the country's 71.71 million people are workable and 69.09 million of them are employed, the official data showed.
In 2024, some 23.69 million of the total workable people were women and 48.02 million men, the statistics showed.
According to the report, the highest number of labourers was engaged in the agriculture sector with 44.67 per cent, followed by the service sector with 37.96 per cent and industrial sector 17.37 per cent.
The number of unpaid domestic workers was estimated to be 40 million, according to the LFS 2024 report.
The country had a big 'demographic dividend' with its 24.83 million of workable young population aged between 15 and 29 years, the BBS survey showed.
It found that the number of employers in Bangladesh was 2.73 million while 35.76 million workers were engaged in their own business.
In 2024, there were about 4.40 million unpaid domestic workers, 26 million labourers and 0.20 million were engaged in other professions in the country.
According to the LFS 2024 report, about 84 per cent of the country's total employed population were engaged in informal works/jobs, where the engagement of youths was higher than that of other age groups.
Among them, 92.66 per cent were the age groups of 15-29 years and 79.34 per cent 30-64 while 85.47 per cent of them aged 65 years and above, the official data showed.
Among the 2.62 million of jobless people in Bangladesh, about 9.66 per cent of them were from the age groups of 15-24 years while 4.76 per cent were from the age groups of 25-34 years of age.
Dhaka has the highest number of unemployed population of about 699,000 while Chittagong remained the 2nd position with 491,000 jobless people.
Among the young people, the number of "Not in education, employment or training (NEET)" population was 8.56 million and their age ranged between 15 to 29 years, the LFS
showed.
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