The unemployment rate in Bangladesh will remain static at 4.4 per cent in 2018 and 2019, according to a latest projection by International Labour Organisation (ILO).
The ILO made the projection in its annual report titled 'World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2018', released Monday.
It estimated that the unemployed people in Bangladesh in 2018 would increase to around 3.0 million from 2.9 million in 2017, though the rate will remain static.
The report projected unemployment rate at 3.5 per cent in India, 4.2 per cent in Pakistan, 4.1 per cent in Sri Lanka, 2.7 per cent in Nepal and 2.4 per cent in Bhutan in 2018.
The rate remained static in India since 2016 while it declined in Sri Lanka since 2015 and Bhutan since 2013. On the other hand, the rate has gone up in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal, according to the report.
The lowest unemployment rate in Bangladesh was 3.4 per cent in 2010.
As the global economy recovers with a growing labour force, global unemployment in 2018 is projected to remain at the 2017-level, which was 5.6 per cent with total number of unemployment exceeding 192 million people, according to the report.
The rate also projected to remain static in 2019.
As the long-term global economic outlook remains moderate despite stronger than expected growth in 2017, the report attributed the positive trend between 2016 and 2017 mainly to the strong performance of labour markets in developed countries, where the unemployment rate is projected to fall by an additional 0.2 percentage points in 2018 to reach 5.5 per cent, a rate below pre-crisis levels.
In contrast, employment growth is expected to fall short of labour force growth in emerging and developing countries, but has nevertheless improved compared to 2016.
"Even though global unemployment has stabilised, decent work deficits remain widespread: the global economy is still not creating enough jobs. Additional efforts need to be put in place to improve the quality of work for jobholders and to ensure that the gains of growth are shared equitably," ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said.
Though unemployment rate is high in Bangladesh, the rate of vulnerability is lower compared to other South Asian countries.
Some 57 per cent vulnerable employment rate has been projected in Bangladesh for this year. The rate in Nepal is projected to be 79 per cent, Bhutan 71 per cent, India 77 per cent, Pakistan 60 per cent and Sri Lanka 40 per cent.
A large part of the jobs created in the region remain of poor quality: vulnerable employment affects almost half of all workers in Asia-Pacific, or more than 900 million men and women.
Projections indicated that 72 per cent of workers in Southern Asia, 46 per cent in South-Eastern Asia and the Pacific, and 31 per cent in Eastern Asia will be vulnerable employment by 2019, showing very little change from 2017.
"The high and persistent incidence of vulnerable employment in the region largely reflects the fact that structural transformation processes, whereby capital and workers transfer from low to higher value-added sectors, are lagging behind in large parts of the region, with the exception of Eastern Asia," explains ILO economist Stefan Kühn, lead author of the report.
Eastern Asia, mostly driven by China, has seen the share of agricultural employment first, and that of manufacturing later, decreasing at a faster rate, with workers increasingly relocating to services.
In Southern Asia, structural transformation proceeds much more slowly: agriculture employment still represents 59 per cent of total employment, manufacturing accounting for only 12 per cent, and services for about 24 per cent. South Eastern Asia and the Pacific's economy have increasingly become service-based without having had a proper experience of industrialisation.
Around 90 per cent of the jobs in Bangladesh are informal, said the report.
It showed that despite sustained job growth, decent work deficits and informality challenge prospects of further reduction in working poverty in Asia and the Pacific.
"The high incidence of informality continues to challenge prospects of further reduction in working poverty, especially in Southern and South-Eastern Asia. Informality affects close to 90 per cent or more of all workers in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Myanmar and Nepal," it said.
Such high incidence of informality only partly reflect high shares of employment in agriculture - a sector where informality is usually higher than in the rest of the economy. In fact, informality in these countries remains pervasive also in the non-agriculture sectors, such as construction, wholesale and retail trade, and accommodation and restaurants.
In addition, the report also notes that informality continued to affect more than half of workers in China, and more than one of every four workers in the Republic of Korea, with no significant difference between the agriculture sector and the rest of the economy.
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