Potentiality of Labour Force in Bangladesh

Executive Summary

Labour Force is one of the most important indicators for development of a country. That country is so much developed, who is capable to utilize his labour force properly. So in order to utilize the labour Force, Survey, Study or Research work is must in this context. Because it is the precondition to make a good plan to proper use on labour force. In my discussion, It covers all population aged 10 years and over who were engaged in economic activities as defined by system of National Accounts, 1993. All persons covered by the term paper, are classified as usual, into three distinct categories namely employed, unemployed and not in the labour force. The objectives of the study is to estimate the size of the labour force, the number of working person, the number of educated unemployed person by age, sex education and locality, As also in objective Bangladesh is to assess the potentiality of labour force in Bangladesh.

 The study on labour force potentiality in Bangladesh is based on secondary data which is collected from various are specially on “the report of the labour force survey Bangladesh 2003-2004 by industry and labour wings, BBS, planning division, MOP, Govt. of the PRB, Dhaka.” The Method, usual definition, and extended definition is followed to study. The major findings of this study are, out of total population. The numbers of is population is 74.2 million, where, 38.3 million for male and 35.9 million for female. But male are the major part in labour force group and female are less part.

 So it is recommended in the study that female should be encouraged to involve in economic activity. In the labor force, schooling or education should be ensured.

Introduction

Statement of the Problem

There is so much labour force potentiality in Bangladesh. But there is no authentic report on this. Either is govt. or in non-govt. enterprise. But without any authentic report, there must have no plan. So if govt. wants to formulate a suitable plan about the labour force, if the govt. tries to drive this force smoothly, there must be well planed. In order to formulate well plan on this, Research and Survey must have in this context. We don’t know exactly how much people are involved in economic activity both urban and rural. How much people are unemployed, what is the unemployment rate, under employment rate etc. Crude activity rate, refined activity rate, the number of major occupation, employment rate etc. Crude activity rate, refined activity rate, the number of major occupation, employment status, what is the number of not in labour force etc. So, this is why, my survey is necessary.

Objective of the Study:

The main objective is to collect comprehensive data (current status) on labour force  aged 15 and above. The other specific objective of the study are as follows:

(i)         To estimate the size of the labour force (economically active             population) by age, gender, education and locality.

(ii)        To estimate the number of working person by occupation,     industry an employment status.

(iii)       To estimate the number of working person by occupation, industry and employment status.

(iv)       To assess the demographic and socio economic conditions of labour force.

(v)        To Measures the extents of unemployment/under employment.

(vi)       To estimates the Number of educated unemployed by age, sex        education and locality and type of economic activity involved on      completion of education.

(vii)      To assess the potentiality of labor force in Bangladesh

Scope of the Term paper

This study is based on secondary data, which contains some chapter like as labour force concepts and definitions, household and population characteristics. Labour Force characteristics, characteristic by usual definition, by extended definition characteristics of employed population unemployment and under employment, youth labour characteristics etc.

Method

The study on labour force potentiality in Bangladesh is based on secondary data which is collected from various area, specially on “The Report of the Labour Force survey Bangladesh 1999-2000” by Industry and Labour wings, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, planning division, Ministry of Planning Govt. of the PRB, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Other Source is books/journal Report News Paper.Two method usual definition.

Explanatory Notes

Housing Unit:

Housing unit is defined as a structure of a part of structure, which is used as a separate living quarter. It should have its own entrance and kitchen facilities.

Household:   

Household means a group of person’s related or unrelated living together and taking food from same kitchen.

Economic Activity:

Economic activity is synonymous with the definition of UN system of National Accounts and covers all market production and certain types of non-market production including processing of primary product for own consumption etc.

Labour Force:

Labour force is defined as persons aged 15 years or unemployed during the reference period of the study.

Employed Person is a person who was either working once or more hour for pay or profit or working without pay in a family farm or enterprise or organization during the reference period.

Unemployed Person is a person who was voluntarily out of gainful employment during the reference period.

Under employed is the condition where by a person’s employment is considered in adequate time in terms of time worked income earned.

Not in Labour Force:

Person who was not engaged in any economic activity like students.

Self employed means a person working for his/her own house hold farms or non-farms enterprise for profit or family gain.

Activity Rate is the ratio of the number of employed persons to the population of age 15 years and over expressed in percentage.

Gender Activity rate is the ratio of the economically active population to the total population expressed in present.

Refined activity rate: is the ratio of the number of economically active persons to the population of aged 15 years and over expressed in percent and extended definition to followed to study. Some table and edaphically representations is used for study and I mentioned the source of this data.

 Limitations  

In order to complete a successful research paper, it must take enough time. But I have given a little bit time to complete this paper. This is the main limitation. Another limitation was a Lack of book availability. NAEM library is not enriched with this book.

 Review of literature

Planning Commission, Private Organization and other NGO’s Surveyed and conducted research and till now it is going no. The result of that is not satisfactory. Bangladesh child labour force by Report of the labour force every Bangladesh. Both are the activity of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS). Planning division of GPRB. Another International report book by United Nations i.e. Economic and social survey of Asia and the pacific 2005 has played important role for my study. So the other Newspaper, weeklies helped me a lot.

Main Body

Study design, Concepts

Introduction:

It covers all the populations aged 10 years and over who were engaged in economic activities as defined by UN system of national Accounts, 1993. All person covered by the survey are classified as usual into three district categories, namely employed, unemployed and not in labour force. The study covered the whole of the country desegregate by urban and rural areas as in the case of the previous various report.

Two sets of definition of economically active population are currently being used. One is the usual or conventional definition and the other is called the extended definition. Key definitions are already stated in explanatory notes. I would like to express the concept adopted in the labour force study. The first step was to classify all the persons in surveyed house holds into three-broad activity such as (i) working persons (employed)  (ii) not working persons (seeking available for work or unemployed (iii) neither in working nor available for work.

The average no. of wage and salaried persons per household was 0.25 of the national, 0.57 in the urban area and 0.16 in the rural area.

 Labour Force Characteristics

Working Age Population by broad age group sex and locality has been presented as below. Of the estimated population of 127.5 million, 74.2 million were in the working age. Among them 16.6 million were in the urban area and the rest 57.7 million were in the rural area. Of the working age population at the rest 57.7 million were in the rural area. Of the working age population at the national level, 38.3 milion were male and 35.9 million were female which gives a sec ration of 16.6. In the urban area 8.5 million males and 8.1 million females were in the working age corresponding to 29.9 million and 27.8 million females in the working age group in the rural area.

Table-01: Working age population by broad age Group, Sex and Locality

 Note: Figure may not add to total due to rounding, working age population refers to population aged 15 years and over which provides labour force in many countries including Bangladesh.

As regards percentage distribution of working age population it is that 94.6% were in the age group 15-64 and rest 5.4% belonged to age group 65 years and over. These percentages were 95.6% and 4.2%. In the urban area corresponding to 94.3% and 5.7% in the rural area.

Characteristics by usual definition

Population aged 15 years and over by activity status:

Population aged 15 years and over by activity status has been presented in table 3.2. It reveals from the table that of the working age population, the highest 34.2% were engaged in house hold work, 24.7% were self employed and own account worker 21.6% worked for wage, salaries and commission, 6.9% were student, 63% were engaged in crop and non-crop production, cottage industry small trade and farm activities as unpaid workers. The percentage of working age population who did not work but available for work was 2.3%, those who retired from service and income  recipients were 2.8% and other 1.2% were beggars, disable etc.

There exists variation between males and females with respect to activity status. It is clearly show in the following table:

Table-02: Population aged 15 years and above by activity status:

 Among the male, the highest 42% were self employed/ own account worker followed by 33.9%who worked for wages salaries and commission, 8.1% were student 5.2% were engaged in crop and non- crop production, cottage industries, small trade and farm activities as unpaid worker 3.9% were engaged in house households work 2.9% were retired / income recipient and same percentage 2.9% did not work but available for work and 1.1% were engaged in other works.

Among the females, 66.6% were engaged in household work, followed by 8.4% who worked for wages, salaries and commission 7.5% were engaged in crop and non-crop production, cottage industry, small trade and farm activities as unpaid workers, 5.7% were students, 2.8% were retired, 1.7% did not work but available for work and 1.3% were engaged in other works (Baggers, disabled etc.).

Population Aged 15 years and over by board Economic category:

Population aged 15 years and over by broad economic categorically finding are that of the total 74.2 million population at the national level aged 15 years and over, 40.7 million were in labour force and the rest 33.5 million were outside the labour force. Among the population in labour force, 39.0 million were employed and rest 1.7 million was unemployed. Those who were outside the purview of the labour force among them the highest 25.4 million were engaged in house hold work, 6.1 million were students, 2.1 million were income recipient and 0.9 million were baggers and disabled etc.

Table 3: Population Aged 15 years and over by board Economic category

In the urban area, among the 16.5 million populations aged 15 yeas and above 9.2 million were in the labour force and rest 7.3 million were not in the labour force. Those who were in labour force, 8.7 million were employed and 0.5 million were unemployed.

On the other hand in the rural area out of 57.7 million, 31.5 million were in the labour force and rest 30.3 million were not in the labour force. Those who were in labour force, 1.2 million were employed and 0.7 million were unemployed.

Labour Force by level of Education and literacy:

labour force by level of education has been presented in table-4. It is revolved from the table that of the total labour force 15 years and above, 45.6% had no schooling, 24.3% had education level  I-V, 12% attend class VI-VIII, 5.5% had education level IX-X, 8.5% had education level SSC/HSC of education and only 4.1% had degree and above education.

Table 4: Labour force by level of education has been presented.

 There exists sex differential in the level of education. The percentage of no schooling was 42.1% for males compared to 58.7% for females. Those who had education level SSC/HSSC or equivalent were 9% for males as against 6.5% for female. The percentage of males who had degree and above education levels were 4.6% compared to 2.0% for female.

Labour Force Groth Rate

Tablt – 5 :Groth rate of labour force ( 15 years over) during 1995-1996 and 1999-2000 has been presented in table

It is revealed from the table that in 1995-1996 the size of labour was 36.1 million and in 1999-2000 it increase to 40.7 million. The volume of the male labour force was 30.7 million in 1005-1996 and it is increase to 32.2 million in 1999-2000. the no of femals labour force increase from 5.4 million to 8.5 million between 1995-1996 to 1999-2000.

Crude and refined activity rates of population aged 15 years and over by sex:

Crude activity rate for both sexes at the nation level was 31.9%, in the urban area it was 33.8% and in the rural it was 31.4% Refined activity rate for both sexes at the nation level was 54.9%, in the urban area it was 55.3% and in the rural it was 54.6%

 Table 6: Crude and refined activity rates of population aged 15 years and over by sex:

 The above figures shows that some sex difference exist in the level of crude and refined activity rate.

 Characteristics of Employed population:

Employed persons by broad sector of their employment have been presented in the table 4.1. It is observed from the table that among employed persons of both sexes, 51.3% were engaged in agriculture sector and 48.7% were employed in non-agriculture sector. In the non-agriculture sector, out of 48.7% as high as 35.6% were engaged in service sector and the rest 13.1% were engaged in industry sector.

Table 7: Employed persons 15 years and over by gender and broad economic sector.

There exist Urban-Rural variation in the daily wages rate. The urban rat for both sex, male and female were Tk.80, Tk.59, Tk.63 & Tk.35 for rural area respectively.

Unemployment and under employment

Unemployment rate of population for LFS (1999-2000) has been presented in the Table 5.1. It revealed from the table that in 1999-2000 the unemployment rate stood 4.3%. For urban area, the unemployment rate was 5.8% for that time being. In the rural area, unemployment rate was 3.9% in 1999-2000. There exist male-female variation in the unemployment rate 3.4% for male and 7.8% for female in the given (1999-2000) period.

Table-8: Unemployment rate of population (15+) by sex and residence

 Unemployment by Education:

It is very interesting to mention that unemployment rate were observed high among educated people. The highest unemployment rate was observed for population with level of education class IX-X (13.1%) and lowest for persons having no education (1.4%). The unemployment for HSC education level was 11.5% and that of degree level was 7.8%. However, the highest rate of unemployment was observed for SSC HSC equivalent education level (26.6%) followed by class IX-X education level holders (253%).

Accounting to Report of the labour force survey, Bangladesh 1999-2000 by BBS. It is strongly observed that out of 40728 thousand civilian labour force absolute unemployed person were 1750 that sand and those who worked <15 hours i.e. unpaid family worker were 341 thousand. Considering both the categories as unemployment we see that unemployment rate stand 51% as against absolute unemployment rate of 4.3%. This extended unemployment rate stand at 3.5% for male and 11.1% for female at the national level.

 Youth Labour Characteristics

Your labour may be defined as those labour who are in the age range 15-29 years.

Youth labour by economic category. It is observed that of the youth population of 30636 thousand, 14510 were in the labour force and 16126 were not in the labour force. Those who were in the youth labour force, among them 88.9% were employed and 11.1% were unemployed among the youth population who were not in the lanour force, 69.0% were engaged in the house hold work, 30.3% student, 0.2% were found retired and 0.5% bagger or income recipient.

Labour force participation is not so good. At the national level, the labour force participation rate (employed+ unemployed) was 47.36%. It was 71.06% for male and 25.67% for female. It was revealed that age specific participation rate increased with increase in age.

Literacy rate of economically active, employed and unemployed youth was at the national level, the literacy rates for economically active employed and unemployed youth population were 56.24%, 52.99% and 82.38% respectively. Such rate for male was 59.88%, 57.33% and 84.11% and female the seats were 47.02%, 41.24% and 79.45% respectively.

The employment status of the youth, It was observed that at the national level, the highest 32.0% were self employed or own account worker followed by 26.4% day labourers, 21.7% unpaid family helper and 19.8% employer. Among the males, the pattern is almost similar to both sex, the highest 35.0% were self employed or won account worker followed by 29.0% day labourer. 18.6% employee and 17.3% unpaid family helper. But for the females, the highest 33.7% were unpaid family helper followed by 24.1% self employed or own account workers and 22.9% employed.

Table-09: Unemployed youths aged 15-29 years by age group, sex and residence.

 The age composition of unemployed youth shows an interesting features. The concentration of employed youths was the highest (54.6%) in age group 15-19 and it decreases with the increase in age. This trend is true for both urban and rural areas. How ever the concentration of unemployed reduced sharply in the following age group (20.24) for the rural area compared to urban areas.

Major Findings of all the 15+ populations on an average about 5% are 64+ populations. Rest of all are in range 15-64 and their percentage is on an average 95%. So labour force is very much potential in our country.

Out of total population the number of 15+ population are 74.2 million male are 38.3 and female are 35.9 million out of 35.9 million of female aged group, the highest 23.9 million are engaged in house hold work, and out of 38.3 million of male age group, highest 16.1 million are engaged in self employed/own account works.

Out of 74.2 million of (15+) working aged group 40.7 million is in labour force group, and rest 33.5 million are not in labour force group, 32.2 million male (15+) aged group are in labour group, where as 8.6 million female are in labour age group. Among 33.5 million (not in labour force) only 6.1 million are male and 27.3 million are female. So sex differentials exist here.

labour force by the level of education, there exist sex differentials. The percentage of no schooling was 42.1% for male to 58.7% for female.

Employed labour force 31.1 million for male and 7.9 million for female. So there are sex differentials.

Recommendations

1. Women are the half portion of our country and in every spheres, they are lagging behind. So they should be incorporated with the main stream of work force.
2. Government should formulate necessary policy in favour of women already employed and joined in labour force.
3. NGO’s should play a vital role in bringing the idle work force into work through their activities.
4.   Among the total labour force as female are leg behind. So they should be encouraged to involve in economic activity.
5. Employed labour force in the context of female Government should take necessary policy in favour of female employed labour force.
6. As no schooling rate is so high. So I wish govt. and non-govt. organization will come forward to take necessary action to ensure schooling among the labour force.