Thousands of Kenyans thronged G4S headquarters in Embakasi on Friday, June 16, 2023, for job interviews seeking to fill 150 job vacancies announced by the company.
The security and courier company had announced 150 vacancies for package handlers, and by 8am thousands had arrived at their headquarters seeking the jobs.
The G4S incident raises concerns about the unemployment rates in Kenya, which according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), stood at 4.90 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2022 from 5.30 per cent in the third quarter of 2022.
The unemployment rate measures the number of people actively looking for a job as a percentage of the labour force.
According to data from KNBS, Kenya’s total workforce will increase 40.6 percent to 40.4 million by 2035, which could see the rate of unemployment swell to unprecedented levels.
Despite households getting fewer children in the modern times, at least 11.7 million will join the job market over a period of 15 years from 2020. Five counties will contribute at least 26 per cent of the workforce including Nairobi, which will add 914,634 by 2035, Kiambu 627, 260, Nakuru 615,976, Narok 465,764 and Kakamega 436,376.
According to the data, 36 percent or 10.1 million of the country’s 28 million population eligible for the labour market are out of work.
Situation of the country.. Live scenes at G4S,,
Rosecoco || 15B to 30B ||Azziad pic.twitter.com/MPqB81jmsm
— simply_ibrahhim (@husseinibrah35) June 16, 2023
Worse still, out of the 10.1 million Kenyans without jobs, 2.5 million are actively looking for work while 7.6 million are inactive.
