At a time when production cost, overheads and workers’ wage have increased, especially in the readymade garment industry, entrepreneurs and apparel exporters are trying to imbibe technological interventions to maintain business profitability.
However, such a move is having an adverse impact on employment generation in Bangladesh, which is renowned for ready availability of workforce needed for labour-intensive industries like garment manufacturing.
“Annual employment growth has declined sharply in recent years,” stated visiting senior fellow of the Centre for Development and Employment Research Rizwanul Islam while speaking at a seminar organised by Dhaka-based think tank Policy Research Institute recently.
Rizwanul maintained that establishment of large and medium-sized industrial units was on the rise, which contributed to the modernisation of the manufacturing process with an emphasis on productivity thereby impacting employment generation and growth rate in the manufacturing sectors, in recent years.
The decrease in the number of garment manufacturers and the so-called wage difference and gender inequality has also affected women employment in the sector further underlined the senior fellow while presenting his research paper titled ‘Bangladesh Employment and Labour Market Watch 2019: Sectoral Challengers and Opportunities’, at the seminar.
Textiles, apparels, leather and leather products along with pharmaceuticals and furniture witnessed lower or negative growth in employment compared to the period of 2005-06 to 2015-16 and 2015-16 to 2016-2017, Rizwanul’s research found besides underlining that larger industrial units in readymade garments are adopting manpower-saving technologies.
“This has contributed lesser growth in jobs,” Rizwanul added.
It may be mentioned here that as per the research carried out by Rizwanul, employment fell to 1.7 per cent during 2010-16, which was around 3.3 per cent during 2005-10 period.
During the same period, the annual employment in the manufacturing sector came down to 4.6 per cent from previous 6.3 per cent, Rizwanul said.
