High-profile job opportunities in the ready-made garment (RMG) and the textile sectors grew by 8.37 per cent in 2022, according to data from Bdjobs, the largest job portal in the country.
The growth, however, began to slow down during the last few months of the year.
Industry insiders credit the growth in job opportunities to increasing export earnings from the sector. However, they fear the good momentum has ended due to the global economic volatility and vacancies will continue to reduce in the coming months unless the economy improves.
According to Bdjobs data, a total of 3,453 factories of the garment and textile sectors posted 10,189 job circulars on the platform offering up to 16,908 vacancies in 2021. The following year, the site saw job offers for 18,324 vacancies in 10,979 posts from 3,877 companies.
The companies mostly looked for marketing and merchandising, production, compliance, and planning officials.
An analysis of the job offering data reveals that the RMG and the textile sectors offered above 1,500 job vacancies in every month in 2021 except January, February, April and July. The platform, in that year, saw the highest 2,002 job vacancy offers in September and the lowest 893 in April.
Meanwhile, job vacancies in the sectors peaked to 2,083 in January 2022. Vacancies never went below 1,100 that year.
The Bdjobs data shows that the RMG and textile sectors posted the most job offers between August 2021 and August 2022. But the flow began to slow down from September and job offers dropped to 1,190 in December.
Bdjobs saw a 34.36 per cent year-on-year decline in job vacancies from the sectors in September, 12 per cent decline in October, 2 per cent decline in November, and a 29 per cent decline in December.
Ahsan H Mansur, executive director of the Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh, told The Business Post that the textile and RMG sectors are creating new job opportunities as the sectors continue to expand. But as work orders reduce, it will be difficult to recruit new employees.
He said, “To create new employment opportunities, the government should skill its human resources and take proper initiatives for more foreign investment.”
Dark days ahead
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) President Faruque Hassan said, “Our business has not been going well since the last four months. Considering the ongoing business situation, it will be difficult for us to create new vacancies. We are trying to avoid cutting workers and employees.”
However, according to the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB), the apparel sector earned $4.38 billion through export posting 35.36 per cent growth and $4.67 billion posting 15.35 per cent growth in November and December respectively.
Despite the tremendous growth, job offers from the sector reduced drastically in the two months.
Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA) Executive President Mohammad Hatem said, “Our export earnings are high because we are entering into manufacturing high-value apparel items using semi-automatic or automatic machinery.”
“Besides, buyers began to receive delayed shipments from November. That’s why our export earnings are showing high. But the real scenario is that most of the factories are getting lower orders than capacity.”
The BKMEA president warned that many factories are bound to reduce their workers up to 10 per cent in the coming days due to low work orders.
Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb, the author of the Fourth Industrial Revolution & Bangladesh book, said the reduction in RMG job vacancies in the last four months indicates a possible global recession. Amid the situation, propelling private sector investment is most important.
