Unnayan Onneshan for labour-intensive production capacity

The Unnayan Onneshan (UO) has called for labour-intensive production capacity expanding restructure of economy in order to stave off increase in unemployment and decelerated decline in the incidence of poverty. The independent multidisciplinary think-tank in its current monthly issue of the Bangladesh Economic Update (BEU) points out an increasing trend in unemployment together with increased underemployment, declined employment in formal sector, rising youth unemployment and higher participation of women in labour force. Referring to increasing unemployment, it finds that the number of unemployed population increased at an annual rate of 5.29 percent during the period of 2000-2010 and increased from 1.70 million in 2000 to 2.60 million in 2010. If the current trend continues without active actions, the UO projects that total unemployed population may increase to 3.3 million by 2015. As regards underemployment which occurs when a person works less than 35 hours in a week, a total of 10.99 million, which is 20.31 percent of the total employed labour force, were underemployed in 2010, according to latest available official statistics. The Unnayan Onneshan notes that underemployment is high in rural areas and among the female labour force. In 2010, of the total labour force, underemployed labour constitutes 22.67 percent in the rural areas compared to 12.40 percent in the urban areas and 34.15 percent of female workers compared to 14.40 percent of male workers. Of the total underemployed labour force, nearly 47 per cent were female, according to UNB.