Where are the 840.6 Thousand New Jobs Created in 2018? KNBS Selling Half-Truths

The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) should stop spreading half-truths. On April 25, they released a report claiming that the country’s economy grew by 6.3 percent in 2018 creating 840,600 new jobs, but where are these jobs?

Where are the jobs created? We ask. The analysis does not reflect the reality where several companies laid off hundreds of employees in 2018 over claims that the firms were trying to stay afloat amidst a “difficult economic environment.”

Refer: More Than 2,700 Fired By Kenyan Commercial Banks

The public isn’t buying these results, and anyone who agrees clearly doesn’t see that the numbers don’t correspond to the effect felt by the common man.

Statistics are meant to publicize the truth, however, in this case, KNBS is spreading half-truths. It is a common fact that statistical analyses are a stalwart of government agencies and corporations, and should, therefore, fundamentally state the truth.

Statistics grant insight into solving extreme problems, they foster informed decision-making, sound judgment and actions carried out on the weight of the results, not assumptions. But, can we say the same about the KNBS results about job creation? Hell no.

Numbers don’t lie, that much is true, but they can, in fact, be used to mislead with half-truths particularly if an entity is looking to achieve something, and the Economic Survey 2019 report about job creation is misleading.

Consider this, Kenya’s unemployment rate has hit 43.5 percent, this was officially stated by the National Employment Authority (NEA) barely a month ago.

Read: Kenya’s Unemployment Rate Hits 43.5 Percent

This, for one, contradicts all the other statistics that have been in the public domain for long about the actual state of the unemployment rate in Kenya.

Also, in 2017, the World Bank had estimated the unemployment rate in Kenya to be at 39.1 percent, the highest in the whole of the East African Region.

Now, if the unemployment rate is that high, where are the jobs the KNBS claims have been created across the country?

On April 4, statistics from the regional economic outlook for 2019 released by the African Development Bank (AfDB) show that the vast majority of jobs created in Africa in the past three decades have been informal jobs, Kenya included.

See: Kenya Among Countries Where Formal Jobs Remain a Coveted Luxury

What this means is that if indeed jobs have been created in the country, they haven’t muted the state of unemployment in the country.

If there are any jobs created in Kenya, most of them, in fact, perhaps more than 90 percent are in the poorly-paid informal sector.

The number of new smalls created is substantially small. Some experts claim that about 15,000 jobs or less are created in the economy annually.

There are no formal sector jobs created and more than 500,000 candidates join Kenyan universities every year. Hundreds of thousands of graduates leave the university in hopes of landing a job, but they end up getting disappointed.

See Also: Needs and Expectations of Youth in Africa not Met Despite Improved Public Governance

Almost half of the Kenyan adults’ lack employment despite several years or months of job seeking. The youth are the worst hit, and the Kenyan government is to blame for all these problems since it is responsible for creating employment opportunities for its citizens. Perhaps this is the reason why the KNBS is publicizing misleading information.

KNBS is hiding a multitude of misconceptions. It isn’t great news even though the informal sector is creating a negligible number of jobs.

Workers in the informal sector operate under vulnerable conditions, resulting in small and unpredictable incomes. Since the sector is largely unregulated, it is no wonder that many Kenyans are trapped in a cycle of poverty.

Speaking of which, why hasn’t the KNBS revealed how much these 840,600 people who got the jobs are earning or contributing to the economy?

Related Content: Kenyan Workers Earning Less than they Did 10 Years Ago

Merely giving us numbers without visibility into whether the jobs created are enough to actually uplift the quality of life of the people portrays an unbalanced and even worse, optimistically myopic view.

KNBS wants us to believe that the state of affairs in Kenya are all right when clearly, they are not. Given that some statistics are not 100 percent true, we can confidently say that the 840.6 thousand jobs created are a lie!

This is why we are tired of misleading information. At least back up the numbers with facts or engage the public before assuming everything is all right with them.