Survey: Youth unemployment hits 41%

More than 41% of youth in Uganda aged between 18 and 30 years are not engaged in any productive activity, a report by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics has revealed.

The findings indicate that the 9.3 million youth are neither in education, employment or receiving training.

The same report revealed that 40% of children aged between 5 and 17 years were engaged in child labour excluding household chores while 40 percent of persons aged from five years and above were engaged in unpaid care work, 21 percent in subsistence agriculture, and 39 percent in other subsistence works.

The Uganda National Labour Force Survey was conducted in the second half of last year.

It found that unemployment had increased to 12 percent from 9 percent in the 2019/20 Uganda National Household Survey.

Micheal Ogen, the UBOS principal statistician in charge population, said of the 87% of working Ugandans between 14 and 64 years, 40% were in subsistence while 43% work in agriculture.

The survey shows the labour force is dominated by men who make up 58% of the total.