13,000 youths look for jobs in 2022 compared to 6,922 in 2021

MoLHR to use skills development to help youths get jobs

According to the Ministry of Labour and Human Resources (MoLHR), there are about 13,000 unemployed youth who are actively looking for jobs and registered with the job portal currently, as opposed to 6,922 jobseekers in 2021.

But the figures may not be complete as there may be other job seekers not registered with the ministry. The 2020 Labour Force Survey estimated unemployment rate to be about 5 percent, while for youth it is about 22.6 percent. The pandemic has had a major effect on jobs worldwide, and an increasing trend has been seen over the years with service sectors remaining closed.

MoLHR Minister, Karma Dorji, said that the ministry is constantly looking into combating unemployment by providing skills development program as well as facilitating job vacancies for the youth since more skills equates to more opportunities in the job market.

“We do not have the authority to create jobs, as such, and that falls to the private sector and companies, but what we can do is to identify what kinds of people and skills are in demand in the current market and train them into relevant fields within the current scope,” said the labour minister.

The minister added that in order to identify which sectors have more potential to absorb the youth in the workforce, the ministry is analyzing the number of foreign workers imported, and the skills required by the sectors, and concurrently train the Bhutanese youth in that field so that reliance on foreign workers will be reduced along with unemployment issues.

“Some of our strategies include reforming TVETs so that we are able to provide advanced trainings to our youth, in order to make them highly competent, and not just be able to work in our own country but also in foreign countries. We are already bringing in master trainers from other countries, and currently our yearly intake for TVETs is about 2,000 numbers a year, but we are planning to increase it to 5,000,”said Lyonpo Karma Dorji, adding that this is to ensure that the youth are able to work abroad in case there are not enough opportunities in the country.

One of the challenges, according to the ministry, is the reluctance of the youth to take up jobs that are available to them in the market. “We are trying to make these jobs as attractive as possible,” Lyonpo further said, “From the pandemic, we have seen that construction sector particularly has suffered a lot since they largely depended on the foreign workers. On the bright side, that also means more opportunities for our youth. If the construction sectors relied on local workers, it shouldn’t have been hampered as much during the pandemic.”

The ministry’s solution to addressing unemployment revolves largely around skills development and analyzing the job market.