Jobless Growth : Evidence from Bangladesh

This paper analyzes jobless growth in Bangladesh by examining the relationship between employment growth and output growth from 2002-2017. The findings reveal a sharp decline in aggregate employment elasticity since 2010, indicating that employment is becoming less responsive to growth, i.e., jobless growth. Although employment elasticities across different categories, such as rural, urban, male, and female, have generally declined from 2002-2010 to 2010-2017, the results are not statistically significant in some cases. Throughout the entire period, female employment has been highly responsive to economic growth, while male employment has declined as output grew. The decomposition of the aggregate employment elasticity shows that although agriculture remains the largest employment source, its dominance is declining, and the manufacturing and construction sectors are gradually gaining prominence in employment share. However, the change in decomposition further suggests that the sectoral elasticity change in agriculture still determines the direction of aggregate elasticity due to its large employment share. Our findings do not provide noticeable evidence of any rapid structural change in terms of sectoral employment shares