Amid growing concerns about the recent "jobless growth" phenomenon, the government is conducting a survey on employment, productivity and sectoral investment in the country.
The survey, which is commissioned by the General Economics Division of the Planning Commission, would assess the ongoing 'elasticity of employment' in different sectors with respect to output growth, officials said.
"We are already halfway through the countrywide survey. Hopefully, the outcome of the study would be published by December this year", member of the Planning Commission Professor Dr. Shamsul Alam told the FE last week.
The government initiative comes at a time when there is a growing consensus within the academia that higher economic growth in recent years is not translating into job growth at the same pace in the country.
According to the official statistics, Bangladesh's economic growth averaged about 6.6 per cent between 2013 and 2016-17. During the same period, there has been a net increase of 2.8 million new jobs on top of the 60.7 million jobs that existed in the economy in 2013.
This means that the number of jobs grew by only 0.9 per cent per annum or less than one-eighth of the rate at which the economy grew during the last five years.
Meanwhile, a 2016 joint study conducted by the Asian Development Bank and the International Labour Organisation showed that despite economic growth, employment elasticity in the country has declined between 2005/06 and 2013.
The ADB-ILO study showed that while employment elasticity of national income remained at 0.54-0.58 in between 1995/96 and 2010, it has dropped to 0.39 from 2010 through 2013.
More recent figures from the Labour Force Surveys of the Bureau of Statistics showed that in between 2013 and 2016-17, agriculture jobs declined by 1.1 per cent annually against the output growth of 3.2 per cent.
Meanwhile, jobs in the industry grew by only 0.5 per cent even as output grew by a robust 9.8 per cent, and services sector jobs grew by around four per cent against output growth of around six per cent.
"One of the main reasons for jobless growth is that the sectors that are driving the growth in recent years are not labour intensive," said Professor Selim Raihan of South Asian Network for Economic Modeling (SANEM), a think-tank that is helping GED conduct the study.
"Secondly, there has been a growing move towards automation within the readymade garment sector after the Rana Plaza disaster, which has contributed to less employment within it," he added.
To support his point, Professor Raihan noted that employment in the garment sector has declined by 0.8 million in the last five years.
Meanwhile, much of the new employment is coming from the service sector -- and most of these jobs are informal and low- paying, he added.
Experts have cautioned that if such trend continues, it will lead to a further gap between the output growth and employment growth.
In addition, the growth in unemployment would further increase the public expenditure on the social security front and therefore, would decrease the rate of investment, they said.
The declining trend in employment elasticity can lead to increased inequality in the country.
"Our study would analyse employment elasticity in the country over the period of 2009/10 and 2016/17", Professor Alam said.
"It would identify the employment growth and labour market challenges in Bangladesh by sectors and would also provide in-depth analysis of the structural transformation in the employment scenario of the country", he added.
"Currently, BBS is conducting household surveys and labour force surveys separately. However, there is an interrelation between the two", Professor Raihan said.
"We would try to combine the elements of both the household survey and the labour force survey and would provide a more in-depth and thorough picture of sectoral employment in the country", he added.
Officials expressed the hope the study would help the country map out investment priorities and strategies for employment and skill improvement in the near future.
