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Issues in the Labour Market

The Informal Sector: New Directions for Businesses

Transitions to Formal Employment

Mariam, now 22 years old, dresses up to leave for work with a smile on her face. She is now a formal employee in the factory where she was previously working as a casual worker. She is a machine operator at the factory. Mariam owes a lot to Fatema and her employer for the training they provided. The training developed her and the skills of other entry level female workers. It also built their confidence so that they can be promoted to positions as operators and supervisors. It worked for Mariam.

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Issues in the Labour Market

Covid Crisis: Export Industries and Workers

Photo by Fahad Faisal / Original used under CC BY-SA 4.0

In recent years, there has been greater attention and movement towards improving working conditions and worker safety in Bangladesh. However, the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic has introduced a new set of challenges for both employers and employees.

To better understand this issue, Quay Asia has set out to do extensive analysis of the challenges and successes in the export-oriented industries during this unprecedented time. In a series of three articles, we will trace events from the starting point to the present day focusing on the health and safety of workers in the ready-made garment industry.

This series is primarily for the benefit of policy makers and administrators in the private sector. The goal is to inspire better practices to protect workers, avoid sudden disaster and ensure long-term sustainability of businesses.

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Issues in the Labour Market

The Informal Sector: Considering Productivity

Accounting for Low Productivity in the Informal Sector

At six o’clock in the morning Mariam, now 18 years old, wakes up and gets ready for the day. She works at a garments factory just outside Dhaka city. As she brushes her hair, she remembers her work as a maid. She was just a child. She cooked, cleaned and took care of the kids when their parents weren’t around. Maryam has bad memories of those times. She always felt the family were unhappy with her work. But she didn’t know why. Sometimes they were happy and would give her gifts of clothes and sometimes money.  When she they were unhappy…well, those really were painful memories.

That’s all behind her now. But work in the factory isn’t easy, either.

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Issues in the Labour Market

The Informal Sector: Early Work Experiences

The Impact of Early Experiences of Work

“Mariam, get up!” comes a scream from the other side of the room. Mariam’s eyes open and she is forced back to reality. The sweet smell of her mother’s roti and vegetable evaporates leaving the odour of old curtains unwashed for years.

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Issues in the Labour Market

Transitions: Next Steps

Youth face many challenges trying to find work, and attaining a certain level of education or certain skills will only get them so far. Not only do skills training programs need to do a better job teaching youth the best and most up-to-date technical skills, they need to teach youth better soft skills. That was made clear by the last post. However, that only tells half the story. Employers also need to be better recipients and need to adopt better practices to get the most of their new, inexperienced youth employees.

To better understand some of these issues, we asked employers and human resource experts what they thought.

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Issues in the Labour Market

Transitions: To Work

It is clear that continued education and skills training offer better futures for youth as they enter into the workforce.

The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics and the International Labour Organisation define youth as those aged 15-24.   As seen in the last post, youth face challenges even when they boast strong skills or high educational attainment.

Moving towards the other end of the spectrum, it is also important to consider what the experience is like for employers as these youths enter the workplace. As Bangladesh looks to take advantage of the demographic dividend, are the incoming youth workers trained well enough to take on such a task, or are their skills lacking?

Subsequently, how do employers have to accommodate under-experienced and sometimes ill equipped youth, or do they think youth are equipped with the right skills?

In this post, we explore skills training and what can be done to improve the experience of employers as they welcome an influx of new workers over the coming years.

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Issues in the Labour Market

Transitions: From School

Transitions: Bangladesh

The Demographic Dividend

Development and population are complex concepts that require more sophisticated models to study them. They affect each other in different ways and the relationship between the two often changes over time. As Bangladesh transitions from a lower income country to a middle income country, it is important to understand some of the social variables that are at work. A demographic transition model (from Hayes and Jones, 2015) helps breakdown the complex interactions between these two variables.