Rwanda: Unemployment Would Be 1%

Last week, more than a thousand people flocked to the second edition of the Rwanda Job Day, a fair which gave the opportunity to those looking for work to meet potential employers. Most of them were higher education graduates, and it is also fair to assume that the majority came from the Kigali area. In addition, while there will surely have been people who already have a job but are looking for something better, it is also probable that most are unemployed.

This high turnout of mainly university graduates from Kigali is a good indication of how serious the unemployment problem is in Rwanda. After all, according to a recent study those with tertiary education are more likely to find jobs (or become self-employed) than those who have only finished secondary school or lower levels.

Yet if you would believe the ministry of labor, of the active population in Rwanda only 1% is unemployed, while 43% are underemployed. Considering that even Barack Obama, the President of the world’s biggest economy, can currently only dream of getting American unemployment below 5%, the Mifotra figure is obviously nonsense.

Choosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor from

via allAfrica.com: Rwanda: Unemployment Figures Don’t Make Sense.