Unemployment Analysis in Kenya

UNEMPLOYMENT ANALYSIS IN KENYA Dawn Mwalo Supervisor: assistant Fastova N.I. Kharkov National University of Radioelectronics (Lenina street 14, department of Economic Cybernetic, Kharkov 61166, Ukraine, (057)70-21-490) E-mail: [e-mail] The given work is devoted to one of the most important problems of unemployment in many nations’ economies. The main goals of this work are to make analysis of the tendency of trend of the unemployment rate in Kenya and to determine the factors/causes of unemployment in Kenya.

Unemployment is widely regarded as a major social and economic global problem. The developed countries like the U.S., England, France, Germany, Italy, etc. also suffer from this problem, but it is more pronounced in developing countries in Africa. With the passage of time it has become worse. It is one of the major causes of poverty in Kenya. Unemployment occurs when a person is available to work and seeking work but currently without work. The prevalence of unemployment is usually measured using the unemployment rate, which is defined as the percentage of those in the labor force who are unemployed in a particular region, country. In this case Kenya was used as an example. In this task it was found out that the rate of unemployment increased as the years went by, as we see that the number of Kenyans openly unemployed was 1,800,623 in 1998/99 based on the Integrated Labor Force Survey. In 2005/2006 the number was 1,856,294 based on the Integrated Household Budget Survey. Male labor force participation rate is higher than female participation rate and participation rates are higher in urban than rural areas. In 2005/2006, the open unemployment rate among the youth ages 15-24 as estimated by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, was 24% compared to an overall open unemployment rate of 12.7%. Open unemployment rate in urban areas at 19.9% is more than double that in rural areas. The most frequent explanations of the causes of unemployment in Kenya include: rapid population growth, poor dissemination of labor market information, skills mismatch, structural reforms, slow or declining economic growth, and high costs of labor. Knowledge about the tendency of changing the unemployment and the factors that cause it can help to create adequate model of unemployment in Kenya. Creating social programs and polices to regulate this unemployment problem and support citizens can be very useful to the Kenyan government.