Key Factors that Lead to Unemployment in Kenya

By Amina Faki

Unemployment wallows in the minds and families of many. Idleness has become the new norm in the society; on the streets, local hotels, pubs, and even along the bus stops.

You’ll find many in groups, discussing petty matters; politics, football, current affairs, health and their best celebrities. At the end of the day one leaves their idle comfort zone to head home without a penny, how does he/she put food on the table? This devastating situation has led to a high level of robbery, theft, and violence in the country because it’s the only way one can get money for the day.

We hear and talk about the rise in unemployment and make it an excuse for not doing something constructive in our lives but we forget to get where we are in a world where the unemployment rate is high there are factors that led to the situation in the first place;

High population growth rate; the rapid population growth rate in the country is generating rapid growth in the labor force. Such high population growth rate is incomparable with the available arable land in the rural areas. Hence people tend to migrate to the urban areas in search of jobs aggravating unemployment in the urban areas.

Lack of Co-operant Factors especially in the case of capital and skilled labor is scarce in most developing countries. Many individuals graduate with degrees from schools but they lack the skills and experience to work in different sectors.

Use of inappropriate technology in developing countries creates a situation whereby industries continue using relatively capital intensive methods of production instead of labor intensive ones. This is caused by relative factor prices of capital and labor, and foreign ownership of firms.

Capacity Under-Utilization; most firms tend to produce below their capacity leading them to cut on employment. This arises due to insufficient demand of their products and monopoly practices that limit output.

Global Economic Recession reduces the capacity of most economies to reduce unemployment. Hence, Kenya is not an exception to this.

Seasonal nature of labor demand; the demand for labor in rural areas is mostly seasonal making it worse is the general ignorance of the existence of jobs elsewhere as well as by occupational immobility. This creates problems of underemployment and disguised unemployment.

An imperfection in the labor market is caused by the government and the trade union interventions. This has to some point distorted the labor market by maintaining minimum wages above the market equilibrium. This has failed the Kenyan wage structure to coordinate demand and supply.

Regional disparities in development in the rural and urban tend to encourage migration of labor to towns through rural-urban migration.

Finally, inappropriate education system; Kenya education system prepares people for jobs are not there, the 8-4-4 system is designed to overcome this anomaly but it is intended to make people self-reliant.

If these problems are properly solved then Kenya will be in a good place to employ and cut on the high unemployment rate.