The number of unemployed people in Bangladesh now stands at 2.59 million, with the number of unemployed men rising by 30,000, according to a First Quarterly Labour Force Survey released by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) on Monday.
The BBS conducted the survey on a three-month basis where the unemployment situation from January to March was monitored.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), unemployed people are those who have not had the chance to work for at least one hour in a span of seven days and have been actively seeking employment for the past month.
The overall unemployment rate in the first quarter of this year (January-March) has increased to 3.51 per cent, a slight rise from 3.36 per cent in 2023.
As per the BBS survey, the number of jobless men has slightly increased in the first three months of this year compared with the same period of last year, while the number of jobless women decreased.
During the first quarter of 2024, a total of 1.74 million men and 8,50,000 women were unemployed while 1.71 million men and 8,80,000 women were unemployed in the first quarter of 2023, the survey said.
The BBS used a rotating panel sampling method and collected 1,284 samples from across the country.
According to the BBS’s first quarter report of 2024, Bangladesh had a workforce of 73.75 million people, a rise from 73.69 million a year ago.
The number of female workers decreased to 25.30 million from 25.44, but the number of male workers increased from 48.25 to 48.45 million during this time.
But in the same period, 71.16 million people were employed, which was 71.10 million last year.
