Journals Information
Sociology and Anthropology Vol. 2(6), pp. 207 - 218
DOI: 10.13189/sa.2014.020601
Reprint (PDF) (262Kb)
Unemployment and Labor Market in Urban Ethiopia: Trends and Current Conditions
Fitsum Dechasa Kibret *
Center for Environment and Development, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
ABSTRACT
Ethiopia is one of the African countries with the highest rate of urbanization. Such high growth rate of Ethiopian urban centers presents enormous challenges to the nation. One of the developmental challenges facing urban Ethiopia today is unemployment. While there is little improvement in urban unemployment reduction, the overall performance in employment creation remained sluggish. Despite the growth in the labor force, employment growth is inadequate to absorb labor market entrants. The great concern here is, therefore, whether there should be substantial growth in job creation in urban areas to absorb new labor market entrants. This calls for a careful assessment of the current urban unemployment and labor market situation and efforts being done towards employment creation. On this ground, this essay focuses on conceptual, theoretical and policy-relevant description of unemployment and labor market situation in urban Ethiopia. Accordingly, urban unemployment, despite declining trend is still high, the problem being more prevalent among female and youth group. It shows great difference across regional urban level. The review on urban labor market situation of Ethiopia based on ILO KILM shows that urban labor force participation rate and employment rate do not show that much improvement; only about half of the urban labor force is employed as of March 2012. About one third of the total employed individuals were engaged in informal sectors showing the significant role of informal sector in urban Ethiopia as an important part of economic life which tends to absorb a considerable amount of the growing urban labor force. There are different policies and strategies introduced and implemented by the government for employment generations on both the demand and supply side in the public and private sectors. However, the employment creation role of both public and private sectors have been constrained by different factors among others are privatization, tax rate, lack of or inadequate finance/credit and infrastructure/facilities. For these the suggestions made are addressing the poor labor market situation of female; implementing labor-intensive employment creation strategies for the growing young skilled labor force; and arranging access to organized market, credit institution, modern technology, formal training and providing institutional protection for informal sectors.
KEYWORDS
Urban Unemployment, Labor Market, Employment Creation
Cite This Paper in IEEE or APA Citation Styles
(a). IEEE Format:
[1] Fitsum Dechasa Kibret , "Unemployment and Labor Market in Urban Ethiopia: Trends and Current Conditions," Sociology and Anthropology, Vol. 2, No. 6, pp. 207 - 218, 2014. DOI: 10.13189/sa.2014.020601.
(b). APA Format:
Fitsum Dechasa Kibret (2014). Unemployment and Labor Market in Urban Ethiopia: Trends and Current Conditions. Sociology and Anthropology, 2(6), 207 - 218. DOI: 10.13189/sa.2014.020601.