The rate of youth unemployment in Bangladesh remained one of 'the most worsening' situation among the countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
The country's overall unemployment rate rose by 1.0 percentage point in 2017, according to International Labour Organisation (ILO).
Bangladesh's youth unemployment rate increased by 6.4 percentage points in 2017 since the year 2010, the Asia-Pacific Employment and Social Outlook 2018 of the ILO revealed.
"… the countries experiencing the most severe worsening situation of youth unemployment were Bangladesh (+6.4 percentage points), Pakistan (+5.3) and Vietnam (+3.7)," ILO said in its outlook, which was launched on Saturday.
Besides, Bangladesh remained one of the top positions in respect of employed people working long hours per week.
"In Bangladesh, Cambodia and Myanmar, more than 45 per cent of employed people worked long hours per week."
On the other hand, the incidence of occasional or daily work, however, increased over the period for all four countries -- Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines and Vietnam -- in the Asia-Pacific region.
However, the share of workers without a written contract decreased in both Bangladesh and Vietnam, the ILO outlook revealed.
For the incidence of temporary employment in developing countries, there were slight increases in Bangladesh and Timor-Leste, according to it.
The range of workers in temporary jobs was wider, from 18.6 per cent in the Philippines to more than 70 per cent in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan, the ILO outlook revealed.
In Bangladesh, Indonesia and Pakistan, however, the strong growth records and decreases in working poverty and vulnerable employment have not been accompanied by a decline in the share of workers in informal employment, it mentioned.
However, the ILO outlook 2018 identified working poverty, informality and vulnerable employment, among others, as persistent challenges of Asia-Pacific labour markets.
It also called for coordinated policies to promote decent work as the link to translate economic growth into sustainable development in the region.
With 1.9 billion workers -- 1.2 billion men and 700 million women, the Asia-Pacific region represented 60 per cent of the global workforce in 2017, it said.
The regional unemployment rate of 4.1 per cent is the world's lowest and well below the global rate of 5.5 per cent in 2017, it said.
But while the global unemployment rate has held steady since 2015, the rate in the Asia-Pacific region has increased slightly by 0.1 percentage point. In total, there were 80.9 million unemployed persons in Asia and the Pacific in 2018.
At 10.4 per cent, the youth unemployment rate remained unchanged from 2015 while the global rate increased to 12.6 per cent. But 35 per cent of the region's unemployed were youth (aged 15-24), although youth made up only 20 per cent of the working-age population.
On the other hand, more than two in three workers were in informal employment in 2016, which is closely linked to the 48.6 per cent of workers still in vulnerable categories of employment, it said.
The informal employment rate is particularly high in South Asia, where almost 88 per cent of workers were informally employed, it added.
