Bangladesh is now home to more than 17.5 crore people. Roughly one in four is 15-29 years of age, a cohort of around 4.7 crore, larger than the population of many countries. More than half the population is below 25, and the median age is about 27, against a global median of roughly 31. Close to 20 lakh young Bangladeshis reach working age each year, and most will not find the work they trained for. Many prioritise taking government job exams until they reach the cutoff age (32 years), then turn to the private sector or simply leave. This arithmetic is central to this year’s World Population Day, themed “Realising the hopes and aspirations of young people—today and for the future.” For Bangladesh, this theme lands as an unanswered question.
Behind it sits a demographic dividend, the window when working-age adults outnumber dependants and, in theory, growth accelerates. Projections place its closure between 2035 and 2040—with the peak already having passed in 2020—after which the same speed that built the dividend will build an ageing society. There is no second attempt at this window; what Bangladesh does, or fails to do, with today’s 4.7 crore young people is close to a final answer for its next half century. Other countries show that seizing it takes deliberate investment, and the evidence emerging from Bangladesh is not reassuring.
The roots of this crisis begin long before the labour market. Bangladesh has expanded education access, but quality has not kept pace. Public spending on education has stayed under 2 percent of GDP, well below Unesco’s recommended 4-6 percent and the lowest share in the Asia-Pacific region. The consequences are evident in country-level data: only 49 percent of children aged 7-14 have basic reading and numeracy skills. This poor literacy at 10 becomes poor employability at 22. Higher education has expanded rapidly over the past two decades, with around 55 public universities, more than 100 private universities, and nearly 2,500 affiliated colleges under the National University, which alone enrols about 35 lakh students, more than twice the combined populations of Bhutan and the Maldives.
However, this growth has completely outpaced quality. Memorisation capacity is still rewarded over critical thinking, and industry collaboration is limited. The consequence: data suggests many HSC graduates’ outcomes are comparable to international Grade 7 standards, and most don’t have the skills required in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. As such, tertiary-educated unemployment rose from 9.7 percent in 2013 to 27.8 percent in 2022, even as overall unemployment stayed in the low single digit. Nearly one in five young people are not in employment, education or training (NEET), with the rate reaching almost 40 percent among those aged 15 to 24, nearly twice the global average. This reflects a labour market built on contradiction. The private sector generates about 95 percent of employment, yet a government job remains most graduates’ aspiration: a World Bank study found nine in 10 students at National University-affiliated colleges hope to secure one. Around 700,000 graduates enter the labour market each year, while the economy creates only 13-14 lakh new jobs overall, just 30,000-50,000 of them government positions, with opportunities concentrated in major cities. Faced with these odds, many choose to wait or leave, both representing a quiet withdrawal from the economy that Bangladesh needs them to build.
Waiting is not without cost. Government posts carry pensions, security, and status that an informal private sector—which provides 85 percent of total jobs that come with no contract or protection—cannot match. Graduates spend their most productive years repeating exams instead of building a career or reaching life milestones, and prolonged joblessness often brings anxiety, family humiliation, and quiet despair. Half a century into independence, the country has still not built a private sector able to offer that same security. That frustration did not stay quiet for long. The student-led uprising of July 2024, sparked by protests against the government job quota system, reflected the anger of a generation with degrees but few pathways to stable employment. In many ways, it was the consequence of an education system that promised opportunity but a labour market that failed to deliver it.
For a large share of this generation, however, the answer is not protest but exit. Around 55 percent of young Bangladeshis want to migrate, citing fairer opportunities and a more predictable future. The stock of Bangladeshis living abroad rose by 71.5 percent between 1990 and 2024, from 50.8 lakh to 87 lakh, now about 5 percent of total population. Unlike the previous generation’s migrants on temporary Gulf permits, who sent remittances home and intended to return, today’s migration skews towards degree holders and students, includes more young women, and is disproportionately made up of people who say they don’t plan to come back. At Bangladesh’s most selective engineering university, up to 50 percent of each graduating batch leaves for good, a double loss of public investment and of would-be reformers who might have stayed to fix what pushed them out. The problem lies with the conditions producing that calculation, not the people making it.
Gender and geography sharpen these pressures. Bangladesh still has the highest child marriage rate in Asia, with 51 percent of women married before the age of 18, and one of the highest adolescent pregnancy rates outside Sub-Saharan Africa. Urban female labour force participation fell from 31 percent in 2016 to 25 percent in 2023, even as young women make up a growing share of those choosing migration over marriage or an early, informal job, a break from a generation ago, when leaving was almost entirely a male decision. Young people also remain badly underrepresented in decision-making bodies, so those most affected have the least say in fixing these issues.
Bangladesh has recognised these challenges through the National Youth Policy, the Eighth Five-Year Plan, and the 2025 National Youth Entrepreneurship Development Policy. However, these efforts remain fragmented, with no effective link between education planning and labour market demand or regulation of higher education expansion. The country’s young people are not asking for charity but for an education system and labour market that match their ambitions. This year’s World Population Day is a test of whether those ambitions are realised at home or elsewhere. Bangladesh still has the talent and the opportunity, but not much time.
Dr Nuruzzaman Khan is senior research fellow at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health under the University of Melbourne in Australia. He can be reached at [email protected].
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
Follow The Daily Star Opinion on Facebook for the latest opinions, commentaries, and analyses by experts and professionals. To contribute your article or letter to The Daily Star Opinion, see our guidelines for submission.
