Full Report - Subregional Office for East and North-East Asia - escap

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SURVEY OF ASIA AND THE PACIFIC 2013
that persist in the subregion. Inclusive development is
held back by unequal living standards, unequal human
development outcomes and unequal opportunities
based on gender, education and labour market status.
The high concentration of poverty and hunger results
partly from a mismatch between structural change
in output and employment structure. While the share
of the agricultural sector in GDP declined sharply
over time, the majority of workers are still employed
in this sector. As a result labour productivity in
the agricultural sector remains low. The services
sector is the second major provider of employment
but most of these jobs are low paid and in the
informal sector. Official open unemployment rates
are generally low in these countries. For example,
the unemployment rate was 6% in Pakistan and
4.5% in Sri Lanka in 2011. Therefore, in South
Asia far more important is the persistence of low
productivity and low paying jobs, which are mostly
found in the agricultural and urban informal sectors.
In 2010, the agricultural sector accounted for 51.4%
of total employment in 2010, whereas industry
and services accounted for just 20.8% and 27.9%
respectively (SRO-SSWA, 2012).
Roughly, half of the world’s
working poor are living
in South Asia
Given the structure of the economies in the subregion,
vulnerable employment (own-account workers plus
contributing family workers) is the highest in this
subregion. In 2011, vulnerable employment dropped
to 77.7% from 81.8% in 1991. Working poverty also
persists at very high levels, reflecting the high share
of vulnerable employment. Based on the $2-a-day
international poverty line, South Asia has the highest
proportion of working poor in the world at 67.3% in
2011, although it is down considerably from 86%
in 1991. In absolute terms, the number of working
poor has gone up from 361 million people in 1991
to 422 million in 2011 due to the failure to create
a sufficient number of productive and decent jobs.
Roughly, half of the world’s working poor (estimated
to be 46.2% in 2011) are living in South Asia.
Women are also far more likely to be employed
in informal work than men. Despite this, women’s
labour force participation rates remain relatively
low at 36% compared to 77% for men. Given that
labour markets are overwhelmingly informal in the
subregion, and that women are more likely than
men to be employed informally, efforts to protect
and improve the livelihoods of informal workers
may indirectly encourage more female labour force
participation (SRO-SSWA, 2012).
This subregion faces the dual challenge of raising
productivity to ensure that incomes are rising and
poverty is falling, and creating enough jobs for a
growing working-age population, which is expanding
by about 2% per annum. With almost 60% of the
population under the age of 30, Governments of
countries in South Asia have to take advantage of
this demographic bulge. Otherwise, the consequence
can be social unrest, conflict and insecurity.
Youth unemployment is an increasing structural
problem, and it stood at 9.9% in 2011 as compared
with the 3.6% overall unemployment rate in South
Asia. For some individual countries, the rates of
youth unemployment were much higher, for example,
more than 17% in Sri Lanka in 2010. In South Asia,
demographic trends are such that the youth labour
force continues to grow and few opportunities exist
for paid work. Even if paid work can be found, the
risk of low wage employment is substantially higher for
young workers. Therefore, workplace training schemes,
the creation or improvement of apprenticeship systems
and entrepreneurship training programmes as well as
programmes that are aimed at offsetting the mismatch
of technical skills among youth are important to
enhance the employability of youth.
South and South-West Asia must offer a way out
of poverty and exclusion for its rapidly growing
working-age population. Therefore, countries in the
subregion should maximize growth through productive
job creation and appropriate structural change to
reduce poverty, hunger and inequalities. Countries
in the subregion should also provide good-quality
education, health, sanitation and other infrastructure
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