Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) report shows some of the sectors that have highly contributed to employment creation to Kenyans in the last ten years. It shows that the construction sector that was supported by a decade of increased public spending on infrastructure and emergence of construction of high-rise buildings and the construction sector grew by 95 percent from 116,100 jobs in 2012 to 226,500 in 2021. Jobs created by the private sector players increased from 98,700 in 2012 to 217,300 in 2021. At the same time, job creation in the education sector grew, where education sector employed 609,200 Kenyans in 2021 from 384,800 in 2012 or 25,000 jobs annually for the ten years. This confirms the Commission of University Education (CUE) report for the 2017/2018 report showing that education had the greatest number of graduates at the bachelor’s level. Other important courses as per the number of graduates employed after school include business administration, law, natural sciences, Mathematics and statistics. Several lessons here: one this is an appropriate guide for students and stakeholders to improve these high employing courses and also broaden other areas to absorb other graduates, including expanding the role of Science, Technology and Engineering in order to industrialize and manufacture more goods and services locally.
Secondly, the KNBS report shows that six sectors of the economy have contributed to 71 percent of all formal employment opportunities or 2.09 million jobs out of the 2.9 million Kenyans who are formally employed. These sectors are – education; construction; manufacturing (which employs 336,800 people in 2021 hence growing by 25 percent in a decade); public administration and defence; agriculture; and trade (wholesale and retail where it has grown by 30 percent since 2012 to employ 256,300 persons). These six sectors are pointers to where the academic and industrial stakeholders should harness their partnerships to grow the sectors in a way that they create more jobs and opportunities for Kenyans. The 80/20 principle or the pareto principle emphasis the need to harness the 20 percent of resources/sectors that can generate 80 percent of results/outputs and successes. Thirdly, the private sector should be incentivized to create more jobs in the construction, education, ICT, human health and social work and financial and insurance sectors since the report shows a positive trend by the private players in these sectors Dr. Mutegi Giti, Urban management, Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) & Environment Specialist. mutegigiti@gmail.com, @danielgiti.
Dr. Daniel Mutegi Giti 