Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) has indicated that only 78,400 new formal jobs were created in the economy last year compared to 114,400 in 2017.
The job creation fall to a six-year low in 2018, worsening the plight of school leavers in the year that the Jubilee Administration recorded its best economic performance, official data has shown.
This is the slowest pace of formal job growth since 2012 when the economy churned out 75,000 official jobs.
Corruption has been attributed to the businesses loss as many youths aren’t considered for the jobs.
President Uhuru recently warned of the public officers of misusing public resources.
Uhuru said that corruption is tilting the reputation of the government as the money meant to help youths are ending to the individuals pocket.
In total, the President Uhuru Kenyatta-led government, which rode to power with a promise of generating one million jobs every year, managed to create 840,600 (formal and informal) jobs in 2018 down from 909,800 the previous year.
Jobs tops the list of failed Jubilee promises. Jubilee promised to deliver 1 million jobs per year. They delivered 804,000 jobs per year.
There were 5.1 million job seekers when Jubilee took power. There are 6.4 million job seekers after four years of Jubilee’s leadership.
Kenya was ranked 139 least corrupt country out of 174 countries globally in 2012. The ranking dropped to 145 out of 176 countries in 2016.
The number of jobs that Jubilee ought to have created by now should average 4 million. However, according to data from Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, between 2013 and 2016 (both years included) there have been a total of 3.2 million jobs created, meaning that about 804,000 new jobs have been created annually since Jubilee came to power.
This figure by itself indicates a positive achievement on Jubilee government, but when examined by the percentage of people seeking employment every year, unemployment rate in Kenya remains unchanged.
The rate of unemployment by 2012 was at 40%, and by May 2016 the unemployment rate had dropped to a figure of 39.1%. Calculating against labor force that was 12.8 million in 2012 and 16.4 million in 2016, we find that 5.1 million Kenyans were actively looking for jobs across the country, and the number increased to 6.4 million job seekers by 2016.
That is, 1.3 million new Kenyans joined the category of Job seekers within the last four years – averaging to an increase by 325,000 job seekers per ye