41% of youth out of school not employed, says Ubos 

At least 41 percent of youth, which represents 9.3 million aged between 18 and 30 years are not engaged in any productive activity, according to findings contained in the Uganda National Labour Force Survey. 

The findings compiled by Uganda Bureau of Statistic (Ubos), indicate that the 9.3 million youth are neither in education, employment or receiving training. 

Youth unemployment remains a serious challenge to Uganda, which has forced government to recently concede that the level of the country’s growth was not matching up with job creation. 

The survey also found that 40 percent of children, which represents about 6.2 million aged between 5 and 17 years were engaged in child labour excluding household chores while 40 percent of persons aged from five years and above were engaged in unpaid care work, 21 percent in subsistence agriculture, and 39 percent in other subsistence works.

The Uganda National Labour Force Survey, conducted for the period ended 2021 also found that unemployment had increased to 12 percent from 9 percent in the 2019/20 Uganda National Household Survey.

Overall, the level of unemployment implies that much as government has put a lot of emphasis on industrialisation so that many Ugandans can get employed in factories and industries, the rate at which people are getting employed remains drastically low in a country characterised by a mismatch underutilisation of the existing labour force.  

Mr Micheal Ogen,the Ubos principal statistician in charge population, said 87 percent of working Ugandans between 14 and 64 years, 40 percent were in subsistence while 43 percent work agriculture. 

The labour force is dominated by men as 58 percent compared to and 39 percent females.

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