The economy generated 897,800 jobs in 2017, handing President
Uhuru Kenyatta his best annual performance since he took the reins of
power more than five years ago.
Despite a sluggish
economic growth of 4.9 per cent—the slowest in five years attributed to
adverse weather and prolonged electioneering —the number of new jobs
generated in 2017 stood at 65,700 more than 832,100 the previous year.
Data
released by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) on
Wednesday, however, shows that 87.8 per cent of the new jobs or 787,000
positions were created in the informal sector.
The
labour market, which attracts about one million new formal job seekers
every year, also recorded an impressive 36.6 per cent growth in wage
jobs, up from 75,500 in 2016 to 103,100 last year. The rest of the jobs,
6,900, were unpaid family labour.
“The new (wage) jobs included extra personnel engaged in the
public sector to serve in the Independent Electoral and Boundaries
Commission (IEBC” said KNBS director general Zachary Mwangi.
Last
year, several public and private sector entities hired temporary staff,
to perform elections-related tasks. The IEBC itself hired at least
17,000 temporary staff directly, among them 1,775 voter registration
assistants, 15,686 clerks and 580 constituency ICT clerks.
The
data further shows that of all the wage jobs created, 53,900 were in
the public sector with private sector accounting for the remaining
49,200.
The economy’s jobs creation momentum had
previously grown steadily from 755,800 in 2013 to a peak of 844,400 in
2015, before declining to 832,900 in 2016.
The 897, 800
new jobs in 2017, however, falls 102,200 below million target that Mr
Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto first set themselves in their
Jubilee coalition’s 2013 election manifesto.
Of all the 2017 new jobs, education was the single largest contributor, generating one in every five jobs created.
Other
top job creators were agriculture (12.5 per cent), manufacturing (11.4
per cent), public administration (9.9 per cent) and retail sector (9.4
per cent).
Ironically, the fastest growing sectors –
tourism, financial and professional services - each accounted for less
than three per cent of jobs generated last year.
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