“Khandu-Om” is right

February 20, 2012Posted inYouth15 Comments
“Youth Unemployment – A serious concern for Bhutan?” That’s what BBS asked yesterday, on People’s Voice, a popular Sunday show. The debate was timely, given that thousands of students are now entering the workforce. But public opinion on this important topic was overwhelmingly one-sided: 733 of the people who took part in the vote said that youth unemployment is a serious concern; only 87 said that it isn’t. My blog post earlier this month, when the Class 12 results were announced, drew similar responses. But one of them, by a “Khandu-Om”, put the blame squarely on me. Here’s what…

Nervous and scared

February 2, 2012Posted inEmployment20 Comments
The Class XII results are out. 8,576 students took the exams last year. And a good 86% of them passed. They’ve completed school. Some of them will go to college. Some will undergo training. And the rest will enter the world of work. They’ve begun a brand new chapter in their lives, a chapter that should be full of promise and excitement. So we should be happy for them. And we should be excited for them. But I’m not. I’m not happy. And I’m not excited. Instead, I’m nervous. And I’m scared. More than 7,300 students passed the Class…

Falling unemployment numbers

July 4, 2011Posted inEmployment15 Comments
Between 2009 and 2010, unemployment in our country fell drastically, and impressively, from 4% to 3.3%. At least, that’s what the government has claimed. But some experts have questioned the low unemployment numbers. So I requested the labour minister for disaggregated data for 2009 and 2010 to study the reductions in unemployment rates. Two bits of interesting figures jumped out at me, as soon as I glanced at the data. The first was that between 2009 and 2010 unemployment for the age group 15 to 19 years fell 13.6 percentage points. Unemployment for this age group in 2009 was…

Unemployment news

April 20, 2011Posted inEmployment11 Comments
First the good news: unemployment has dropped from 4% to 3.3% and will be further reduced to 2.5% by 2013. The prime minister announced the good news in his State of the Nation report last year. The government reiterated the good news in January this year, during a review of the project Accelerating Bhutan’s Socio-economic Development. Now the not-so-good news: the government’s unemployment figures have been questioned, forcing them to “… refute allegations that the data they used to indicate drop in unemployment rate for 2010 was manipulated”. And finally the bad news: more than 6000 people applied for…

Good job

August 18, 2010Posted inGovernment9 Comments
The prime minister, in his State of the Nation address, on employment: I am pleased to report to the Hon’ble Members that a total of 320,900 are now employed. This shows that 96.69% of our workforce is employed leaving an unemployment rate of 3.3%, marking a downward movement for the first time in recent years. This indicates very clearly that this government is well on track to achieve its ambitious target of 2.5% unemployment rate in the next three years with a huge labour market in the making. This is good news. After all, unemployment, especially youth unemployment, is…

Jobs for Bhutan

October 18, 2009Posted inEmployment, Monarchy
As Bhutan is a small country with a small population we must never allow ourselves to reach a situation where we are unable to provide employment to our people. Ensuring that this does not happen is an important responsibility of the government. His Majesty the Fourth Druk Gyalpo, 17 December, 2000, Trashigang

Jobless in Bhutan

October 14, 2009Posted inEmployment, Youth
The results of the Labour Force Survey, 2009 has me worried: unemployment has jumped to 4%; and more than 80% of them are youth between the ages of 15 and 25. In absolute terms, 13,000 of the 325,700 economically active people are unemployed. And of them, 10,500 are youth. Youth between the ages of 15 and 19 are hit the hardest – 20.1% of them are unemployed. So last week’s job fair was a good idea. It sought to boost employment by bringing employers and jobseekers together. But, our labour minister’s statement at the job fair has me even…

Unemployment: a big problem?

May 26, 2009Posted inEmployment, Youth
Somehow, during the last few weeks I've bumped into several young unemployed people. All of them complained that they tried hard, but couldn't get jobs. Some of them were continuing to aggressively seek work. But some had given up. I've also bumped into two groups of youth who are themselves employed, but are thinking about starting something that would help other young people get jobs. These two groups are unrelated. They don't know each other. But both groups are so convinced that unemployment is already a major problem that they have decided that they may have to take matters…

A repeating problem

November 26, 2008Posted inGeneral
Jigme Dorji has a problem – he passed Class 12, but wants to repeat Class 12!He secured an overall result of 65% percent, including a high of 75% in geography, which, I think, is quite good. But he feels that it’s not good enough and insists that he needs to repeat, and get better results, in order to do well in life.To do well in life means to get a job in the civil service or, at the very least, a big corporation. For that he needs a bachelor’s degree.65% didn’t get him admitted to Sherubtse College, Gedu College…