Rwanda Labor Force Survey: A big share of unemployed population is engaged in subsistence agriculture

By Kanamugire Emmanuel

Labour statistics that have been released by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) in its present report showed that a large number of unemployed people across the country are engaged in subsistence agriculture and most of them are females compared to males.

The first labour force survey was conducted in August 2016 and continued on a bi-annual basis until August 2018. Since 2019, the survey was re-designed to provide estimates of the labour market aggregates on a quarterly basis. The recent report is for the first quarter of 2025 conducted in February.

Data from the report indicate that in February, the working age population (16 years and above) was around 8.4 million of whom around 4.7 million were employed, 593 thousand were unemployed, and 3.1 million were out of labour force.

The agriculture sector was employing majority of the employed population standing at 43.7 % excluding those engaged in subsistence foodstuff production.

The unemployment rate stood at 11.1 % indicating that for every 9 persons in the labour force, there was one person unemployed.

“This reflects a 1.8 percentage points decrease compared to the same quarter last year; and it was relatively lower as compared to the pre-COVID-19 estimate in the same quarter February 2020 (13.1 %)”, reads the report.

It is highlighted that the unemployment rate was higher among females (12.5 %) compared to males (9.9 %). Youth also experienced a higher unemployment rate (13.6 %) compared to adults (9.5 %).

“The share of unemployed workers engaged in subsistence agriculture was 59.1 %. The proportion of female farmers engaged in subsistence agriculture was higher than of male farmers at 50.7 % and 42.8 %, respectively”.

About 57.2 % of male farmers were engaged in market-oriented agriculture, a proportion higher than that of females involved in the same activity (49.3%).

Other sectors that employed a substantial number of populations were wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles (13.5%), construction (7.6%), transportation and storage (6.5%), manufacturing (4.9 %), education (4.2 %), activities of households as employers (3.6 %) and accommodation and food services activities (3.5 %).

Youth Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET)

The number of the young population aged 16-30 years, who were neither in employment nor in education or training (NEET) was estimated to 836,977 persons representing 23.0% with a higher rate among females (28.7 %) than males (17.0%). The NEET rate was higher in rural areas (24.7 %) than in urban areas (19.4 %).

“Comparing the current NEET rate with the results of the same quarter one year earlier, the NEET rate decreased by 5.4 percentage points at the national level. Similarly, it decreased by 4.9 and 5.7 percentage points among the male and female populations respectively.”

Who are people outside labour force?

The population outside labour force can be divided into three important components, namely, students, persons involved in subsistence agriculture and other outside labour force including largely population who are available to work but do not do anything to search for a job, retired persons, people unable to work because of illness or disability.

The population outside the labour force (Not employed nor unemployed) stands at 37% of the working age population, according to the report and they are estimated to 3,127,025.

Those engaged in subsistence agriculture represented 48.6 %, students exclusively accounted for 27 % while the remaining 24.4 % fell into other categories.

The report states that among the components of the population outside the labour force, include “available non-job seekers”. These are the discouraged jobseekers who did not “seek employment” for labour market-related reasons such as past failure to find a suitable job, lack of experience, qualifications or jobs matching the person’s skills, lack of jobs in the area, considered too young or too old by prospective employers.

“They constitute a large category and in Rwanda, most of the population in this category are primarily subsistence farmers”, reads part of the report.

At least 211,000 people enter the market place in Rwanda every year which shows that more jobs need to be created. In the priorities of the National Strategic Transformation (NST2), Rwanda targets to create 1.25 million productive and descent jobs over the next five years.