Jobs yet to recover from the Covid pandemic-induced shocks

Graduates queue in long lines at Wabera Street waiting for a chance to get a job interview at the Sarova Stanley which was conducting massive recruitment for the hospitality department. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Creating more jobs was at the heart of President William Ruto’s campaign for the August 9, 2022 election in which he defeated his closest challenger, Raila Odinga.

His team was especially critical of a “flawed” economic model that seemed to reward the few players at the top at the expense of millions in the informal and agricultural sector.

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“It is most disconcerting that, even when the consequences of economic exclusion are so glaring, and the threat so palpable, many well-to-do people’s response to our bottom-up economics platform is to pour scorn on the idea of empowering wheelbarrow pushers,” says the manifesto of President Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza coalition.

But Dr Ruto’s policies on creating jobs for those at the bottom of the pyramid are yet to take effect. The building of affordable houses, a key pillar in job creation for the so-called hustlers, is yet to start.

“The Kenya Kwanza housing commitment is to turn the housing challenge into an economic opportunity,” reads the manifesto.

The manifesto goes on: “Next to agriculture, we see housing production as the sector that will create quality jobs for the 100,000 or so young people graduating from TVETs every year directly in the construction sector and indirectly through the production of building products.”

Read: How Kenya’s unemployment rate rose highest in E. Africa

Yet, months after he rose to power, analysis of official employment data by the Business Daily showed that the number of jobs in nearly half of the private sector in Kenya had not recovered from Covid-induced shocks, dimming the hopes of millions of skilled youth joining the labour market.

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