EMPLOYMENT TRENDS BY EMPLOYMENT STATUS

The following data comes from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics - Quarterly Labour Force Report. The data and original reports can be found here.

DEFINITIONS USED IN KNBS QUARTERLY LABOUR FORCE REPORTS

Economically Active:

The activity principle of the labour force framework is based on the concept of production of goods and services falling under the production frontiers of the United Nations System of National Accounts (SNA 2008). The economically active population analysed here consisted of the employed and the unemployed persons. The employed includes those persons who reported that they did some work during the reference period or they held a job even if they were not actually doing any work at the time. This covers persons who were on leave or had a business to return to. The unemployed were persons who reported to be without work, available for work and actively seeking work. Also included here were persons who though they may not satisfy the criteria for unemployment, reported that they were out of season or on temporary layoff.

Inactive Population:

The economically inactive population also known as persons not in the labour force, covers persons who did not work or hold a job during the reference period and did not seek work because they were either full time students, infirm/incapacitated, retired or did not need work due to unspecified reasons. Persons who reported that they were retrenched or declared redundant and persons whose businesses closed and had not taken steps towards looking for alternative jobs or starting other businesses were included in the inactive population.

Labour force:

Consists of all persons in the working age population who are either employedor unemployed. It was previously also referred to as the ‘currently active population’

Employment:

Refers to performance of work as defined above. This term is used to measure the number of persons employed, including persons at work during a short reference period, and also persons temporarily absent from work but holding a job.

Unemployment:

Under the strict terms is defined as people who do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the past four weeks, and are currently available for work.

Long-term unemployment:

This refers to all unemployed persons with continuous periods of unemployment extending for one year or longer (52 weeks and over).

Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR):

The LFPR is a measure of the proportion of acountry’s working-age population that engages actively in the labour market, either by working or looking for work; it provides an indication of the size of the supply of labour available to engage in the production of goods and services, relative to the population at working age

Working patterns:

Depending on their daily or weekly working hours, persons may work either on full-time or part-time basis.

The Working-age Population (WAP):

includes all persons in the population above a specified age threshold used for statistical purposes to define the economically active population

Dependency ratio:

This is an indicator of the economic burden the productive portion of the population must bear. It is computed as a ratio of the population considered to be “dependent” (aged below 15 years and 65 years and above) to the working age population(15 to 64 years).

Employment to population ratio:

This is the proportion of a country’s working agepopulation that is employed. It gives an indication of the job opportunities that are available for the persons in the economically active age groups in an economy. A high employment to population ratio indicates that a large proportion of the population is employed, while a low ratio means that large share of the population is not directly involved in market related economic activities because they are either unemployed or out of the labour force.

Time-related underemployment rate:

This is a measure of labour underutilization that provides information regarding the share of employed persons who are willing and available to increase their working time (for production within the SNA production boundary) and worked fewer hours than a specified time threshold during the reference period.

Labour underutilization:

Refers to mismatches between labour supply and demand, which translate into an unmet need for employment among the population. Labour Under Utilization [LU2] is computed as the combined rate of time-related underemployment and unemployment.