Half of the country’s eligible workforce is now unemployed mainly due to a number of factors including absence of enough employment-generating sectors, lack of skill development programmes and improper distribution of fiscal incentives. Although a good number of people enter the job market every year, enough employment opportunities are created to absorb them. So, increased fiscal allocation is needed along with conversion of untapped portion of the demographic dividend into resources. The observations were made in a recent research analysis book on budget titled “National Budget 2016-2017: In Quest of People’s Participation”. Parliamentary Caucus on National Planning and Budget, Centre on Budget and Policy, University of Dhaka and Democratic Budget Movement jointly published the research publication in association with ActionAid along with some other NGOs (non-governmental organisations). Citing Bangladesh Labour Force Survey 2013, the publication stated that the country has a workforce of 106 million. Fifty-eight million of the workforce are economically active. Around 17 million of them are women. Of the active labour base, more than 86 per cent are involved with informal sector like household activities, agriculture, construction and hawking. The highest number of labour force is involved with agriculture (45.1 per cent), followed by service sector (34.1 per cent) and industrial arena (20.8 per cent), according to the publication.
