08 Employment and demographics

Chapter 08 of 60 in the Bangladesh 2036 research base. Contents of the series.

The window has about ten working years left, and 84 percent of the jobs that would cash it in are informal

Bangladesh is spending the fattest years of its demographic transition on the thinnest jobs it has ever created in such numbers. This chapter's claim is that the country has about ten working years left before the age structure turns against it, and that the 14.8 million labour force participants added between 2010 and 2024 were absorbed without formalisation: informal employment was 84.0 percent of total employment in 2024 in the modelled ILO series [ILO 2025], the vulnerable employment share was 57.74 percent, down only 4.4 points from 62.11 percent in 2010 [WB WDI 2026], and output per worker compounded at about 4.6 percent a year in constant 2021 international dollars [WB WDI 2026]. The one structural breakthrough of the period, the entry of roughly 9 million women into the labour force between 2010 and 2022, has gone into reverse: the female participation rate of 43.7 percent in 2022 fell to 38.7 percent in 2024 [ILO 2025]. If the decade converts the remaining window into wage employment, the 2036 economy has the tax base that chapter 04 needs and the pension arithmetic that chapter 15 assumes; if the labour force keeps growing faster than formal jobs, the dividend is cashed as informality and emigration, and the bill arrives in the 2040s when the old age dependency ratio, already up from 6.82 to 9.92 dependants per 100 working age persons between 2010 and 2024 [WB WDI 2026], crosses the levels at which ageing economies must tax formal wages.

The record: 14.8 million more labour force participants, a wage share up 0.9 points in fourteen years, and a return to the farm

The labour force stood at 58.80 million persons in 2010, 74.65 million in 2022 and 73.62 million in 2024, a fall of 1.17 million between 2023 and 2024, before rebounding to 74.74 million in 2025 [WB WDI 2026]. The participation rate of the population aged 15 and over was 58.6 percent in 2010, 61.9 percent in 2022 and 58.9 percent in 2024 in the modelled ILO series [ILO 2025]; the BBS national estimate series shows the same shape, 58.58, 61.87 and 58.90 percent [WB WDI 2026]. Women carry the whole swing. The female participation rate was 35.7 percent in 2010, bottomed at 33.5 percent in 2016, peaked at 43.7 percent in 2022 and retreated to 38.7 percent in 2024 and 38.6 percent in 2025 [ILO 2025]; the national estimate series records the same reversal, 43.35 percent in 2022 against 38.41 percent in 2024 [WB WDI 2026]. The female share of the labour force is 34.03 percent in 2024, up from 30.97 percent in 2010 [WB WDI 2026]. The level sits between South Asia and Southeast Asia: female participation in 2024 was 32.4 percent in India, 31.0 in Sri Lanka, 68.9 in Vietnam, 51.6 in Malaysia and 50.5 in the Philippines [ILO 2025, files].

Unemployment is a misleadingly small number and has been for the entire record. The unemployment rate of the labour force aged 15 and over was 3.4 percent in 2010, 4.6 percent in 2022, 3.4 percent in 2023 and 3.6 percent in 2024 in the modelled ILO series [ILO 2025], and the national estimate for 2024 is 3.63 percent [WB WDI 2026]. Youth unemployment among persons aged 15 to 24 was 11.5 percent in 2022 and 9.6 percent in 2024, and the sex split matters: 14.1 percent for young men against 5.0 percent for young women in 2024, a 9.1 point spread [ILO 2025]. The stock that captures the women who left is the youth not in employment, education or training share, which fell from 30.99 percent of the youth population in 2005 to 14.96 percent in 2022, 15.43 percent in 2024 and 15.6 percent in 2025 [WB WDI 2026]; the female NEET share moved from 55.51 percent in 2005 to 19.04 in 2022, 19.72 in 2024 and 20.1 percent in 2025, against a male share of 10.88 percent in 2024 [WB WDI 2026], so female youth idleness is already back above the 20 percent regime line. The Population and Housing Census 2022, on a different instrument and definition, put the youth NEET share at 35.44 percent of persons aged 15 to 24 [BBS Census 2022]; until the quarterly labour force series matures, the survey based 15 percent is a floor and the census based 35 percent a ceiling, a definition problem chapter 09 returns to.

The employment structure shows absorption moving backwards into agriculture. Total employment was 54.08 million persons in 2010, 60.83 million in 2017, 70.46 million in 2022 and 70.98 million in 2023, then fell 1.91 million persons across the political transition and flood year to 69.07 million in 2024 [ILO 2025]. Agriculture held 47.3 percent of employment in 2010, fell to 41.3 percent in 2022, and rose to 44.4 percent in 2023 and 44.7 percent in 2024, the first sustained reversal of structural transformation in the record, while industry fell from 20.4 percent of employment in 2017 to 17.4 percent in 2024 and services held near 36 percent [ILO 2025]. For women the reversal is starker: 75.4 percent of employed women worked in agriculture in 2024, up from 64.8 percent in 2010 [ILO 2025]. The status table shows the kind of jobs produced: of the 69.07 million employed persons in 2024, 25.99 million were employees, 35.76 million own account workers, 4.40 million unpaid family workers and 2.73 million employers [ILO 2025], which puts self employment in its three forms at 62.1 percent of employment. The World Bank vulnerable employment measure, own account plus unpaid family work, was 57.74 percent of employment in 2024, 65.11 percent for women and 53.93 percent for men [WB WDI 2026]. Wage and salaried employment, the formalising force, was 38.57 percent of employment in 2024 against 37.66 percent in 2010, the female share rising from 18.78 to 34.22 percent, mostly through ready made garments [WB WDI 2026].

Informality is this chapter's centre of gravity, and it is measured, not inferred. The ILO modelled informal employment share of total employment was 86.4 percent in 2010, peaked at 94.4 percent in 2017, and stood at 84.9 percent in 2022 and 84.0 percent in 2024 [ILO 2025]. Informality is a gender regime: 96.0 percent of employed women and 78.1 percent of employed men were in informal employment in 2024, as were 95.0 percent of employed youth aged 15 to 24 [ILO 2025]. The BBS Labour Force Survey carries the same level on the national instrument, 87.5 percent in 2010 and 84.9 percent in 2022 [BBS LFS 2022]. Time related underemployment covered 2.61 million persons aged 15 and over in 2024, down from 3.39 million in 2022 [ILO 2025]. Hours are long: mean hours worked were 50.9 per week for all employed persons and 47.5 for women in 2024 [ILO 2025]. Output per worker was 20,762.82 constant 2021 international dollars in 2024, up from 11,052.67 in 2010, an average compound rate of about 4.6 percent a year [WB WDI 2026]. Pay is measured directly only for construction day labour: a Dhaka mason earned 496 taka a day in FY16 and 590 taka in FY22, a 19.0 percent nominal rise over six years in which the national consumer price index rose 39.3 percent, so the real day wage of the trade that built the decade's construction boom fell 14.6 percent [BBS Wage 2022] [BBS CPI 2022]. The BBS wage and earnings survey that would extend the real wage record beyond construction is not available in any source this chapter draws on, so any economy wide real wage level claim could not be confirmed.

The base: dependency near its floor and the peak departure flow already behind

The population base is still expanding but the age mix is turning. The population was 152.20 million in 2010 and 173.56 million in 2024, with growth of 1.21 percent in the latest reading [WB WDI 2026]. The working age population aged 15 to 64 is 113.71 million persons, 65.51 percent of the total in 2024 against 61.74 percent in 2010 [WB WDI 2026]. The total age dependency ratio fell from 61.97 dependants per 100 working age persons in 2010 to 52.64 in 2024, with the young ratio falling from 55.15 to 42.72 while the old ratio rose 45 percent, from 6.82 to 9.92 [WB WDI 2026]. Total fertility was 2.38 births per woman in 2010 and 2.14 in 2024, near replacement; the median age was 25.65 years and net migration minus 2.73 persons per 1,000 population in 2024 [WB WDI 2026] [UN WPP 2024]. Employment equals 39.8 percent of the total population in 2024, the ratio that fixes how much of the window the economy cashes.

Overseas employment is the pressure valve and remittances are its yield. Recorded departures ran at 425,684 workers in 2014, crossed 1,008,518 in 2017, collapsed to 211,149 in 2020, and reached 1,135,873 in 2022 and a record 1,305,453 in 2023 on the BMET calendar year series [BMET 2023]. On the Bangladesh Bank fiscal year record, sourced from BMET, the flow peaked at 1,197,128 workers in FY24 and fell 15.2 percent to 1,015,675 in FY25, with 309,945 departures in the first quarter of FY26 [BB Econ 2025, Table XVIII]. The 2023 flow divided into 654,781 less skilled workers, 272,493 semi skilled, 323,993 skilled and 54,186 professional, that is 50.2 percent less skilled against 29.0 percent skilled or professional [BMET 2023]; the professional count rose from 1,914 in 2019 [BMET 2023]. Saudi Arabia took 497,674 of the 2023 departures and Malaysia 351,683, a combined 65.1 percent, with Oman at 127,883 and the United Arab Emirates at 98,422 [BMET 2023]. The stock of Bangladesh born persons abroad was 7.40 million in the 2020 tabulation, of whom 2.43 million were women [UN DESA 2020]. Remittances reached 30,328.80 million USD in FY25, up 26.83 percent from 23,912.22 million USD in FY24, the post float formalisation chapter 03 documents [BB Econ 2025, Table XVIII]; divided by the 2020 stock that is about 4,100 USD per migrant per year, a vintage mismatched illustration, not a policy number. At home, the Census 2022 district tables sum to about 3.95 million remittance receiving households and 466,666 returned migrants [BBS Census 2022, derived sums of district tables]. The distributional record ties employment to poverty: the national poverty headcount was 18.7 percent in the 2022 household survey [BBS HIES 2022], the 3.00 dollar a day 2021 PPP headcount fell from 25.1 percent in 2010 to 5.9 percent in 2022, and the Gini eased from 32.1 to 30.9 [WB WDI 2026].

Mechanism: the labour market clears through informality and exit, not open unemployment

Absorption without formalisation. The growth model of FY10 to FY25, garments plus remittances plus public construction, generates employment at the bottom of the productivity distribution faster than it generates wage contracts. The status table gives the arithmetic: between 2010 and 2022 employment grew by 16.4 million persons, employees by only 6.4 million and own account workers by 13.5 million [ILO 2025]. Agriculture and petty services are the default employer when industry slows, as the 2022 to 2024 sector reversal shows. The formality that exists is thin: the 38.57 percent wage and salaried share moved 0.9 points in fourteen years [WB WDI 2026], and an unknown share of those wages sits below the payroll contribution threshold. This is why unemployment stays near 4 percent while informality stays near 84 percent: the labour market does not clear through open unemployment, it clears through underemployment, unpaid work and exit, and the census youth NEET count of 35.44 percent [BBS Census 2022] is what that clearing looks like on a census reference period rather than a survey week.

The female participation margin is procyclical and informal. The 2022 peak rode garment hiring into wage work, the education expansion that changed young women's reservation behaviour, and improving survey measurement; the retreat to 38.7 percent coincided with the post 2024 factory disruption and the Sylhet and Feni floods, visible in the female agriculture share rising to 75.4 percent [ILO 2025]. When formal hiring stumbles, women exit the measured labour force rather than queue in it, which is why the 5.0 percent young female unemployment rate [ILO 2025] is a symptom of exclusion, and the 96.0 percent informality rate for employed women [ILO 2025] is what the exit lands in.

The demographic transition is bottoming out. Fertility of 2.14 births per woman in 2024 [WB WDI 2026] means the cohorts entering the labour force over the next decade are the size of those now in their twenties, while mortality improvement pushes the 65 and over population up. The young dependency ratio has given up 12.4 points since 2010 [WB WDI 2026], and the old age ratio is rising 0.22 points a year on the 2010 to 2024 trend [WB WDI 2026]. The trough year of the total ratio cannot be computed from the tables in the data lake because the UN projections by age are not stored there, so it could not be confirmed. The direction is not: fertility fell late and fast, so the window will not stay open for a generation as it did in East Asia.

Migration corridors price the surplus. Half the 2023 flow was less skilled [BMET 2023], and Saudi Arabia and Malaysia together took 65.1 percent of it, tying the labour market's most elastic margin to two government to government recruitment regimes [BMET 2023]. The remittance yield per worker stays low because the skill mix is low, so chapter 03's post float formalisation raised the recorded yield without changing the mix. The FY25 fall of 15.2 percent shows the valve tightening on its own, and a corridor shock at the scale of 2020 lands on the same households the domestic labour market has already failed to absorb, so the departure flow is both the safety valve and the single point of failure of the employment record.

The decade ahead: 10 to 11 million net new jobs in twelve years while the age structure turns

The projections that bind are the UN's. The UN WPP 2024 medium variant projects a population of 177.82 million persons in 2026, 186.07 million in 2030 and 196.74 million in 2036, with growth easing from 1.19 to 0.80 percent across that window, the median age rising from 26.30 to 30.02 years, and fertility falling from 2.09 to 1.92 births per woman [UN WPP 2024, medium variant]. The working age share these projections imply for 2036 is not computable from the tables in the data lake and could not be confirmed; the 2024 record supports the direction, a working age population still growing in absolute terms while its share peaks and the old age ratio accelerates. This chapter's arithmetic, stated so chapter 15 can adopt or amend it, assumes the participation rate holds at its 2024 level of 58.9 percent, the population aged 15 and over holds its 2024 share of 72.0 percent, and the population grows along the UN WPP 2024 medium path: the labour force then reaches about 83 million persons by 2036, a floor because the 15 and over share rises as fertility falls, and employment must rise from 69.07 million to near 79 to 80 million to hold unemployment in the 4 to 5 percent band, about 10 to 11 million net new jobs in twelve years. That target is of the same order as the 2010 to 2024 record, to be met while labour force growth slows.

Five decision points determine whether the target is met. First, participation: restoring the female rate to and beyond its 43.7 percent 2022 peak requires the factory safety, childcare and transport investments chapter 09 prices, with the labour conventions attached to the GSP+ application that chapter 02 targets in its 2028 window as the external lever [EU GSP 2023]. Second, formalisation: whether payroll registration, the pension architecture chapter 04 carries, and the inspection regime make hiring on contract cheaper than hiring on day wages; the wage employment share is the indicator. Third, migration skill: whether the pre departure training and corridor diversification the 2019 to 2023 professional jump hints at is real and scaled, because each point of skill upgrade raises the remittance yield without adding a departure. Fourth, youth: the NEET stock decides whether the education expansion of chapter 09 lands in jobs or idleness, and the survey census definitional gap must close for the indicator to be usable. Fifth, ageing: an old age ratio rising 0.22 points a year means the family plus land support system starts failing inside this decade, and contributory pensions, the strongest instrument for pulling informal workers onto payroll, become an employment policy, not only a welfare policy. Chapter 15 carries the three scenarios on these decisions: its baseline assumes participation drifts up slowly and agriculture holds near 40 percent, its reform scenario assumes the wage and salaried share reaches the mid forties, and its stall scenario assumes agriculture holds above 45 percent of employment into the late 2030s.

Three risks print in monthly series and the upside converts existing jobs into formal ones

Risks. First, a participation retreat that becomes permanent: if the female participation rate does not recover toward its 43.7 percent 2022 peak [ILO 2025], the chapter's labour force arithmetic loses about 3 million women workers and the dividend is consumed by exclusion; the revealing indicator is the female series in the quarterly labour force bulletins. Second, a youth idleness regime: the female NEET share already crossed the 20 percent line in 2025 [WB WDI 2026], and a total share rising from its 15.43 percent 2024 level would mean the education expansion has outrun job creation and the political economy risks the 2024 transition displayed have become permanent; the revealing indicators are the NEET series and the 9.1 point youth unemployment sex spread [ILO 2025]. Third, a corridor shock: the FY25 flow of 1,015,675 workers [BB Econ 2025, Table XVIII] sits 1.6 percent above the 1.0 million annual line, and a Saudi recruitment pause or Malaysian moratorium at the scale of 2020, when departures collapsed from 700,159 to 211,149 [BMET 2023], would strip the pressure valve from 3.95 million remittance receiving households [BBS Census 2022, derived sums] and drop the remittance cushion of chapter 03; the revealing indicators are the monthly BMET clearance counts and the Bangladesh Bank remittance series.

Upside. First, the formalisation dividend: a wage employment share rising from 38.57 percent [WB WDI 2026] toward the mid forties would convert existing jobs into tax and pension coverage without a single new job, and the revealing indicator is the wage and salaried share in the quarterly labour force series. Second, the migration quality dividend: if the professional and skilled direction of the 2023 flow holds, 29.0 percent skilled or professional against a fraction of that in 2019 [BMET 2023], the remittance yield per worker rises on a flat departure count and corridor risk falls with diversification; the revealing indicator is the BMET skill table against the destination table. Third, the second demographic dividend: fertility near 2.14 births per woman and falling on the UN projection path [WB WDI 2026] [UN WPP 2024, medium variant] lets households and the state concentrate investment per child, the mechanism chapter 09 prices, and the ageing that follows raises household savings, the mechanism that carried East Asia's second wind; the revealing indicators are the household savings rate in chapter 01's accounts and the fertility series in the next UN revision.

What to watch: five indicators whose thresholds mark the employment regime

1. Female labour force participation rate, ages 15 and over. Current value 38.7 percent in 2024 in the modelled ILO series, 38.41 percent in the national estimate series [ILO 2025] [WB WDI 2026]. Threshold: recovery above 44 percent signals the participation regime has resumed; a fall below 35 percent confirms the retreat as trend and costs the decade about 3 million workers against this chapter's arithmetic.
2. Youth NEET share, ages 15 to 24. Current value 15.43 percent in 2024 and 15.6 percent in 2025 on the survey definition, with the female share at 20.1 percent in 2025, already across the regime line [WB WDI 2026], and the census benchmark at 35.44 percent on its own definition [BBS Census 2022]. Threshold: a sustained total reading above 20 percent marks the idleness regime; a reconciled quarterly NEET series would clear the survey census fog.
3. Agriculture share of employment. Current value 44.7 percent in 2024, up from 41.3 percent in 2022 [ILO 2025]. Threshold: a fall below 40 percent signals structural transformation has resumed; a rise above 46 percent confirms the distress absorption regime and with it stagnant rural wages.
4. Overseas departures. Current value 1,015,675 workers in FY25, down 15.2 percent from the FY24 peak of 1,197,128 [BB Econ 2025, Table XVIII]; the calendar year series peaked at 1,305,453 in 2023 [BMET 2023]. Threshold: an annual flow below 1.0 million signals the safety valve is closing; a new peak above 1.4 million with a skilled or professional share above 30 percent confirms the quality upgrade regime.
5. Old age dependency ratio. Current value 9.92 dependants per 100 working age persons in 2024 [WB WDI 2026]. Threshold: crossing 13, which lands inside the 2030s on the 0.22 point a year trend, marks the fiscal moment when contributory pension coverage becomes an employment policy; the pension coverage ratio chapter 04 tracks is the companion indicator.

Sources used

[ILO 2025] ILOSTAT modelled estimates for Bangladesh via bdpolicy parquet, series: ilo_eap_2wap_sex_age_rt_a, ilo_une_deap_sex_age_rt_a, ilo_emp_temp_sex_eco_nb_a, ilo_emp_temp_sex_ste_nb_a, ilo_emp_nifl_sex_age_rt_a, ilo_une_tune_sex_age_nb_a, ilo_how_xees_sex_ocu_nb_a, plus eap_2wap_sex_age_rt_a for five peers via the ilo_peers files. [WB WDI 2026] World Bank World Development Indicators via bdpolicy parquet, series: SL.TLF.TOTL.IN, SL.TLF.TOTL.FE.ZS, SL.TLF.CACT.NE.ZS, SL.TLF.CACT.FE.NE.ZS, SL.UEM.TOTL.NE.ZS, SL.UEM.NEET.ME.ZS, SL.UEM.NEET.FE.ME.ZS, SL.UEM.NEET.MA.ME.ZS, SL.EMP.VULN.ZS, SL.EMP.VULN.FE.ZS, SL.EMP.VULN.MA.ZS, SL.EMP.WORK.ZS, SL.EMP.WORK.FE.ZS, SL.GDP.PCAP.EM.KD, SP.POP.TOTL, SP.POP.GROW, SP.POP.1564.TO, SP.POP.1564.TO.ZS, SP.POP.DPND, SP.POP.DPND.YG, SP.POP.DPND.OL, SP.DYN.TFRT.IN, SI.POV.DDAY, SI.POV.GINI. [UN WPP 2024] UN World Population Prospects 2024 via bdpolicy parquet, series: un_wpp2024_bd estimates and medium variant. [UN DESA 2020] UN DESA International Migrant Stock 2020 tabulations via bdpolicy parquet, Bangladesh origin stock. [BMET 2023] Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training overseas employment tables via bdpolicy parquet, series: bmet_overseas_employment_total, bmet_overseas_employment_professional, bmet_overseas_employment_skilled, bmet_overseas_employment_semi_skilled, bmet_overseas_employment_less_skilled, bmet_workers_ksa, bmet_workers_malaysia, bmet_workers_oman, bmet_workers_uae. [BB Econ 2025] Bangladesh Bank Monthly Economic Trends, October 2025, Table XVIII, number of persons left for abroad on employment and total workers' remittances, sourced by the bank from BMET, via the bb/remittances lake. [BBS Wage 2022] Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics daily wage rates for construction trades by trade and town, via the lake/labor/bbs_daily_wage_rates_construction parquet. [BBS CPI 2022] Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics national general consumer price index via bdpolicy.db, series: bbs_cpi_national_general. [BBS LFS 2022] Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics Labour Force Survey, informal employment rate, via bdpolicy.db, series: bbs_lfs_informal_rate. [BBS Census 2022] Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Population and Housing Census 2022, youth NEET share via bdpolicy.db series census2022_youth_neet_overall_pct, and district tables for remittance households and returned migrants via the lake/demographics parquets. [BBS HIES 2022] Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2022, national poverty headcount. [EU GSP 2023] GSP regulation (EU) No 978/2012 as applied, GSP+ conventions relevant to labour standards.

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Verified line by line against primary sources: 168 claims checked, 8 corrected.

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