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5 lakh more jobless in three years

Rejaul Karim Byron and Sohel Parvez
Despite all his efforts, Arif Hossain, a graduate in Bangla from Dhaka University, has failed to land a job. He has faced many job interviews in the last three years, but all his efforts have gone in vain.
He now pins his hope on the three interviews he appeared for last week.
Arif wishes he gets a call from any of his prospective employers. It will light up the lives of his parents and siblings in a remote village in Satkhira.
"My parents expect me to contrib-
ute to the family and bear the educational expenses of my younger brothers," said Arif, who now pays part of his living costs in Dhaka by tutoring students. For the rest, he has
to depend on his parents.
Arif is one of nearly five lakh new faces that have joined the queue of the unemployed since 2007. The number of jobless people in the country rose to 26 lakh in 2010, up from 21 lakh three years ago, says a preliminary report on Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2010 of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
The BBS conducts a survey on the country's employment situation every three years.
"It shows that enough employment is not being created for people who have education up to SSC [Secondary School Certificate] or below SSC level," said Rushidan Islam Rahman, labour market analyst, while explaining the reasons for the rise in the unemployment rate.
Rushidan, research director at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), said, "This group does not want to engage in agriculture. But the scope for regular non-farm employment is not expanding at a sufficient pace."
She said the unemployment growth reflects an under-utilisation of the country's human resources, and suggested that the government adopt policies that encourage labour-intensive industrialisation.
"There is scope for labour-intensive growth in many sectors," she said, mentioning the furniture and leather industry in addition to the
garment sector.
Prof Shamsul Alam, Member, Planning Commission, said, "The number of the jobless has risen because of an increase in the population."
He said the government had set a target in the Sixth Five Year Plan for creating more than one crore jobs through a promotion of small and medium enterprises and non-farm activities.
According to the BBS, the unemployment rate rose to 4.5 percent in 2010, up from 4.3 percent three years ago.
Zahid Hussain, senior economist at the World Bank, said the mentioned increase in unemployment rate is "somewhat misleading” because the survey does not include Bangladeshi workers abroad.
Nearly 75 lakh Bangladeshis work abroad and their number has gone up in the last five years, according to the expatriates' welfare and overseas employment ministry.
Zahid said the yearly inclusion of new faces in the existing labour force has to be taken into account. "If they cannot find jobs abroad, they will have to be absorbed in the domestic economy or else we will face a serious social problem," hesaid.
Riti Ibrahim, Secretary, Statistics Division, also recognised the need for including
migrant workers in the survey.
"We will take the initiative to do that in the future," she said.
The country's labour force increased 14 percent to 5.67 crore in 2010, with 72 lakh new faces joining the labour force in three years.
Of them, 67 lakh got jobs. Three-fourths of them are women, thanks to a rise in job opportunities for women in the garment industry, the country's biggest export earner.
"A rapid expansion of the garment industry has created job opportunities for women inrecentyears," said Zahid.
Rushidan of BIDS, however, linked employment growth to the rise in low productive self-employment and unpaid family work.
"Self-employment alone cannot ensure a healthy growth of the economy. For this purpose, we need larger economic units that engage paid workers for more productive activities."
Referring to the expansion of the labour force, she said the rise in economically active population was obviously a positive sign, which indicated that a prospective "demographic dividend" was available in the form of labour supply.
"Now it is time to make a proper utilisation of the increased labour force to accelerate economic growth."