Every year, hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi graduates step out of universities expecting to begin their professional lives. Too often, they meet a labour market that cannot absorb them: recruitment is slower, competition is fiercer, and the gap between academic achievement and work-ready skills remains stubborn.
This is no longer a temporary mismatch. Traditional employment is under pressure everywhere, squeezed by automation, artificial intelligence, slower growth and the aftershocks of the pandemic. Young people are hit first and hardest, pushed into unemployment, underemployment, or insecure work. Bangladesh is not immune, and the stakes are higher because the country is young.
More than 30% of Bangladesh’s population, about 52 million people, are aged 15 to 29. That youth bulge can be an engine of growth, but only if it translates into productive work.
The latest Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics Labour Force Survey (2023) puts overall unemployment at 4.48%, while youth unemployment is 7.3%, nearly 1.94 million young people. Around 8.26 million young people (18.9%) are NEET (not in education, employment, or training). Unemployment is also high among educated youth: 12.3% of university graduates and 8.87% of higher secondary graduates are unable to find jobs.
These numbers point to a blunt reality: education, as it is currently delivered and connected to the economy, is not a guarantee of employment.
Bangladesh’s private sector has been the main route to formal jobs, but hiring slows when investment slows and investment slows when the outlook is uncertain. Policy constraints, political instability, weak diversification, and limited exploration of new opportunities all feed into cautious recruitment.
Even where jobs exist, many are concentrated in a narrow set of sectors. That leaves graduates queuing for a small pool of roles, including public sector posts, while the economy needs more firms, more products, and more new markets.
If Bangladesh continues to treat employment primarily as a question of job placement, it will keep arriving late to the real challenge: job creation.
Entrepreneurship is often romanticised as individual ambition. In practice, it is a national capability: the ability to build enterprises that solve problems, serve customers, and create work, first for the founder, then for others.
That begins with discipline rather than slogans. A viable enterprise is built to earn profit sustainably and ethically, through clear goals, a defined market, and a product or service that meets real demand. It requires an understanding of customers, quality, pricing, competition, and delivery, and, above all, the ability to adapt.
Done well, entrepreneurship delivers three national benefits at once. It creates employment because small and growing firms hire locally and absorb skills that the formal sector cannot. It fosters innovation because new businesses test ideas faster than large institutions, strengthening resilience in the wider economy. It can also widen inclusion by opening routes for women, rural youth, and people outside elite networks, provided support systems are designed fairly.
This is why entrepreneurship should be treated as a public mission, not a side project.
Many young entrepreneurs in Bangladesh run into the same bottlenecks early. Access to finance is limited, collateral demands are high, and the pipeline for seed investment remains thin. Business literacy is uneven, from planning and bookkeeping to compliance and marketing. Mentorship and networks are patchy, leaving too few structured pathways to learn from experienced founders and industry practitioners. Meanwhile, policy friction persists through unclear processes for licences, registration, taxes, and regulatory approvals, particularly for first-time entrepreneurs.
These barriers are not proof that young people lack talent. They are proof that the ecosystem is underbuilt.
If Bangladesh is serious about turning its demographic dividend into economic strength, support for entrepreneurship has to be practical, scalable, and coordinated. That means moving beyond one-off competitions and short training towards a pipeline that takes people from interest to launch to growth.
The first requirement is skills that match reality. Entrepreneurship is not the same as office work. In a job, roles are defined and risks are shared. In a business, the founder plans, decides, manages, and carries responsibility for both profit and loss. Training should reflect this, covering customer discovery, basic accounting, inventory and pricing, negotiation, and digital marketing, delivered through universities, local hubs, and credible online platforms.
Mentoring should be routine, not exceptional. It works best when it is structured, with regular sessions, clear goals, and access to sector-specific advice. Partnerships between universities, chambers of commerce, and established entrepreneurs can convert informal support into a reliable system.
Access to finance also needs reform, and so do the terms. Loans can help businesses grow, but they can also sink first-time founders who borrow before they understand risk and cashflow. Finance should come with coaching and realistic repayment schedules, and where possible, alternatives such as seed grants, credit guarantees, revenue-based finance, or equity for high-growth startups.
Compliance should be simpler and more predictable. Trade licences, registration, documentation, and communication with relevant authorities are essential for legitimate business, but processes should be navigable. Clear guidance, digital one-stop services, and transparent timelines reduce the hidden cost that complexity places on young founders.
Finally, entrepreneurs need routes to market. The quickest path to sustainability is sales. Market linkages with suppliers, buyers, and value-chain actors improve input quality and pricing power. Public procurement can also be used more strategically by setting aside a portion of contracts for SMEs that meet standards.
Even in an era of social media marketing and platform-based commerce, the basics determine whether a small business survives.
Customer satisfaction remains the foundation. That means understanding what customers need, delivering consistent quality, setting prices that reflect both costs and willingness to pay, and building trust over time. Poor stock management, weak service, and sloppy presentation quietly drive customers away, and many small ventures fail for these reasons long before they fail because of broader economic shocks.
Financial management is equally decisive. Entrepreneurs need to separate household and business expenses, keep accurate records, track costs, and make careful decisions about spending and reinvestment. A clear business plan is not paperwork for its own sake. It is how founders explain their idea to lenders, partners, and investors, and how they test whether the numbers work.
Bangladesh does not lack young people with ideas. What it lacks is a national system that makes it realistic for those ideas to become sustainable enterprises.
Treating entrepreneurship as a national mission would mean aligning education, finance, regulation, and market access around one goal: enabling young people to create productive work for themselves and for others. It would mean valuing small businesses not only as informal activity, but as the seedbed of the next generation of firms.
The choice is not between jobs and entrepreneurship. Bangladesh needs both. But without a serious push for enterprise-building, the country risks squandering a demographic advantage that will not last.
Anwarul Alam Chandan is a development worker based in Dhaka. Reach him at [email protected].
