THE HUMAN COST OF ECONOMIC GROWTH

Before dawn breaks, factories begin to glow across Bangladesh. Garment workers take their places at sewing machines, construction workers carry bricks and sand, rickshaw pullers enter the streets, while millions more head to shops, hotels, restaurants, transport services, farms and households. Their labour keeps cities moving, markets functioning and industries producing. In many ways, their sweat is the unseen machinery of Bangladesh’s economic progress.

According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) Labour Force Survey 2024, the labour force aged 15 and above stands at 71.71 million-48.02 million men and 23.69 million women. Yet employment for a vast section brings neither stability nor guaranteed rights or social protection.

The latest BBS figures show 80.8 per cent of employment is informal. An International Labour Organization (ILO) analysis based on the BBS Labour Force Survey 2022 put the figure even higher, at 84.9 per cent. Though based on different years, both reveal the same structural reality: most Bangladeshi workers remain outside the formal safety net.

Informality means more than lacking an appointment letter or employment contract. It can mean uncertainty over income, employment, illness, workplace accidents, compensation, pensions and social protection. For a worker living from one wage to the next, illness can become debt, while an accident can push an entire family into financial distress. When living costs outpace wages, workers may borrow, work longer hours or depend on other family members simply to survive.

A job, therefore, does not necessarily mean economic security. Excessive or inadequate working hours, insufficient wages and jobs that fail to use workers’ skills expose deeper weaknesses in the labour market.

 Although laws provide for working hours, leave and overtime payments, enforcement remains uneven. Fear of dismissal and scarce alternative employment often silence workers when their rights are violated.

Self-employment adds another layer of insecurity. Small businesses, petty trading, farming, shops, transport services and street vending sustain millions, but for many self-employed workers, no work means no income. Illness or an accident can instantly erase a household’s only source of earnings.

Women’s participation in the labour market has been central to Bangladesh’s economic transformation, yet the trend has recently reversed. BBS data show women in the labour force fell from 25.3 million in 2023 to 23.7 million in 2024, meaning nearly 1.6 million women left the labour force in one year. The decline raises questions not only about gender equality but also about the country’s economic future. The ILO’s 2022 analysis found 96.6 per cent of employed women were in informal employment.

Young workers face similar vulnerability. Among people aged 15-27, 92.7 per cent were engaged in informal employment, according to the same ILO analysis. For women, workplace safety, maternity benefits, childcare, safe transport, protection from sexual harassment, wage discrimination and balancing paid work with family responsibilities remain major concerns.

Collective organisation could strengthen workers’ bargaining power, yet barriers to forming or joining trade unions and workers’ organisations persist. Fear of dismissal, employer resistance and administrative complications weaken collective voice, leaving the balance of power tilted towards employers.

Workers’ rights, however, are not merely about wages. They include the right to organise, speak, work safely and be treated with dignity. As Bangladesh pursues higher growth, investment and export earnings, decent work should not be treated as an additional cost of doing business. Fair wages, skills development, safe workplaces and social protection are investments in productivity and sustainable growth.

The ILO has emphasised decent, productive and remunerative employment, alongside universal social protection, a national minimum wage system, stronger enforcement of labour rights, reform of labour laws and institutions, and freedom of association. Without protection against illness, workplace accidents, unemployment, old age and climate-related shocks, creating more jobs alone will not end insecurity.

Workers make the garments, build the buildings and produce the goods. They keep transport, markets, agriculture, industry and services alive; they turn the wheels of the economy every day. But if the wheel of their own lives remains trapped in insecurity, how inclusive can that development truly be? Bangladesh’s progress cannot be measured only by GDP growth, export earnings or investment volumes; it must also be measured by the dignity and security afforded to those whose hands make that progress possible.