Make youth employment top agenda

Jobseekers. FILE PHOTO |  

By JAINDI KISERO
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Summary

• Methinks that the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) deliberately complicates the data on unemployment to fudge the true incidence of the malaise.
• This is the impression you get as you go through the latest quarterly labour force report.

Methinks that the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) deliberately complicates the data on unemployment to fudge the true incidence of the malaise.

This is the impression you get as you go through the latest quarterly labour force report. Here are the highlights of the report and how the data is presented.

The working-age population in Kenya — people between aged 15 and 64 — is reported as 27.4 million, just about half of Kenya’s population. The data for the size of the labour force is reported at 17.7 million and the ‘employed’ category is reported at 15.8 million.

Then report starts dwelling of unemployment statistics that are reported in arcane language that only statisticians understand. We are presented with data that dwells on categories like ‘extended labour force (20 million)’, ‘long term unemployed’(551,563) ‘not in labour force inactive) (9.7 million), ‘ labour force participation rate’( 64 per cent), and ‘combined rate of unemployment and potential labour force (22.6 per cent). Which is why I ask: is this critical piece of information meant for public consumption or should its circulation be restricted to statisticians?

And, what is the latest data on the unemployment rate, according to the latest quarterly labour force report? 10.4 per cent! This puts as well in the range of unemployment rates in Spain, Italy and France.

We all still remember that memorable quote attributed to former British Premier Benjamin Disraeli and that was popularised by Mark Twain that goes as follows: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistic.”

Statistics are supposed to be an exact science. Are the statisticians giving us damn lies? I don’t know. I don’t doubt KNBS when it comes to capacity. Indeed, KNBS has the largest repository of trained economists and statisticians in the country. But what I find intriguing is how they come up with the numbers on unemployment. What constitutes a job in an urban economy that has been informalising in very complex ways for such a long time?

Does that able-bodied man who walks around Nairobi bars hawking second-hand clothes go into the books as employed? How about that hawker who walks along Uhuru Highway the whole day, his only stock in trade, fake Chinese hi-fi equipment and mobile phone accessories?

The Jua Kali sector is a place labour turns to only when the alternative is worklessness. What goes in the data as employment is but disguised forms of unemployment.

Yet, if you took random samples of the typical worker sitting in a matatu going to work in Nairobi, the majority will be hairstylists, fitness instructors, disco hall bouncers, cleaners, house helps, watchmen, second-hand clothes hawkers and car wash bays and kiosks workers. A far greater majority will be Jua Kali mechanics, workers in M-Pesa outlets, employees of call centres, mobile telephone repair shops or photocopying and document binding stalls.

Within the central business district, the formerly ubiquitous duka — as shops owned by Kenyans of Indian extraction were popularly known — are fast being supplanted by 10-by-10 so-called “exhibition” stalls selling unaccustomed clothes, footwear, mobile phones and computers — which, invariably, will have been imported through Kismayu port or Eldoret International Airport.

How are these people captured in labour force statistics? It is a pertinent question because we want to know whether this economy still can produce decent jobs. What is the point of gloating about a 10 per cent unemployment rate when the majority captured in the statistics are engaged in forms of disguised unemployment?

Clearly, the most telling shortcoming in our development strategy is the failure to register the singular importance of the unemployment problem. In all the major policy documents, the gravity of the problem is acknowledged.

At every opportunity, the determination to resolve the problem is proclaimed. But this is never really reflected in actual policies, especially at operational levels.

Unemployment and conditions of labour are no longer a major political issue in this country. We need to put the fight against youth unemployment and conditions of labour on top of the development agenda.

You will not hear or see political agitation against job-cuts or workers organising themselves to resist retrenchment.

Instead, retrenched employees will seek counselling on how to cope with joblessness.