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On Wednesday, Uganda and the world celebrated International Labour Day. The national event was held at Mukabura Grounds, St. Leo’s College in Fort Portal City.

This day is commemorated in appreciation of the contribution of workers to national development and helps in raising national and international consciousness on the importance of promoting and protecting the rights of workers. The event is also used as an occasion to remind workers of their responsibilities and obligations.

Although this year’s theme is “Improving Access to Labour Justice: A Prerequisite for Increased Productivity”. Unemployment remains a big problem.

Data from the National Labour Force Survey 2021 indicates that the issue of labour underutilization remains a major challenge, with rates increasing from 35% in 2016/17 to 42% in 2021.

The same report puts unemployment at 12% which translates into about 1.4 million people.

The unemployment rate of a country refers to the share of people who want to work but cannot find jobs. This includes workers who have lost jobs and are searching for new ones, workers whose jobs ended due to an economic downturn, and workers for whom there are no jobs because the labour supply in their industry is larger than the number of jobs available

Worth noting, the unemployment rate is higher among females (14%) than males (10%), and it is more prevalent among urban dwellers at 16% than rural residents at 8%. The pressure on the job market is expected to intensify as the number of individuals reaching 18 years of age per annum is projected to increase from 1.04 million in 2023 to about 1.5 million by 2040, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) has revealed.

In addition, four in every ten youth youths (41%), an equivalent of 3.8 million young people, are neither in employment nor pursuing education or undertaking any form of training as reported by the National Labour Force Survey 2021

The assistant commissioner employment services at the Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development, Milton Turyasiima said there is an urgent need for interventions to address youth unemployment and underemployment in Uganda.

Every year, a total of 7,000 Ugandans enter the employment age bracket of 14 to 64. This means that the economy should be growing faster in commensurate with the number of people joining the labour force.

Uganda’s economy is currently growing at a rate of 5.3% annually as of the third quarter of 2023, following a slightly higher rate of 5.4% in the previous period1. The economy grew by 5.2% during the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022/23. Looking ahead, the economy is expected to grow by 6-6.5% in FY 2023/24.

Turyasiima said curbing unemployment will require a much faster-growing economy.

Situation in the greater East African Region

Kenya’s unemployment rate was 5.6 % in 2023. This represents a steady decline from the increase after the financial crisis.

Tanzania’s unemployment rate for 2022 was 2.60%, a 0.26% decline from 2021. In 2021 it stood at 2.87%, a 0.09% increase from 2020. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for Rwanda hit 16.8%. For Burundi in 2023, the unemployment rate stood at 0.86%.

In 2023, the unemployment rate for the Democratic Republic of the Congo was 4.5 %. Over the last 3 years, the unemployment rate in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been decreasing on average by 6.19% each year, although before that, it grew from 3 % in 2005 to 5.5 % in 2021.

Unemployment Rate in South Sudan decreased to 12 percent in 2023 from 12.40 percent in 2022.