New Delhi: Bangladesh’s graduate unemployment rate is reported to be three times higher, at 13.5 per cent in 2024, than the overall rate of unemployment. Youth unemployment (age 15-29 years) is about 10 per cent, more than double the overall unemployment rate at under five per cent, according to an article in Dhaka-based The Daily Star.
More alarming is that about 30 per cent of youth are categorised as not in education, employment, or training (NEET), the report said.
Jobless economic growth is much more an economic policy problem than an education and training problem. About a dozen major projects on skill development and employment creation have been undertaken in Bangladesh in the last two decades, some of which were funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank.
These projects have expanded training opportunities and contributed to building the institutional support structure. Yet, complaints of mismatch and volume of graduate unemployment have not abated. Rough estimates based on Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics data indicate that 22 lakh youth enter the job market every year, but any kind of new jobs available are only about 14 lakh, leaving more than a third of new job-seekers unemployed, the report states.
The report points out that sociologist Philip Foster, six decades ago, wrote a seminal piece on what he called the vocational school fallacy. He critiqued the insertion of vocational courses in primary and secondary schools as an easy answer to youth unemployment.
He argued that basic general education has the critical task of equipping young people with the foundational skills of literacy and numeracy and helping them cultivate the thinking, reasoning, and values necessary to function as adults in work and life. Primary and secondary schools, especially in low-income countries, have a tough enough job teaching the foundational skills and should not have the added burden of vocational training.
Experience of vocationalising general secondary schools has almost been entirely negative. Foster’s conclusion is even more pertinent today because the nature of jobs now changes rapidly, and workers need to be prepared to relearn and upgrade their skills, the report observes.
