Labor Market and Migration of young women and men

The most important thing I realized from last two session of lecture is that labor market and migration of youth or young people plays vital role in the economic development and economic growth. This lecture also helped me to understand the difference between economic development and economic growth and how the other issues affect differently in these two subject matter. As we all know that Nepal is a developing country, which is listed as low income country in the world having very less job opportunities for youths and other population. Development of a country leads through the well-being of youths of country. Thus, labor market and youth migration affects a lot in the development of country.

A possible implication of the labor market and migration of the youth in Nepal can lead to the development of country. Almost three-quarters of workers continue to earn a living from the agricultural sector in Nepal. Thus, the vast majority of workers are informally employed. Due to the lack of employment opportunities in the domestic labor market, labor migration is the main option for thousands of young Nepalese entering the labor market and both internal and external migration every year. Nepal is expected to have one of the highest rates of labor force growth in the Asia and the Pacific region and this presents an important opportunity to raise the country’s potential rate of economic growth and development (Ilo, 2010). In other side of economic development and economic growth, remittance earned from migrant labor force have contributed by 27.7 % (estimate in 2013) (CBS, 2013) in GDP of Nepal. This is positive side but still not a proper way of development.

The value of learning about the economic growth and development have increase my understanding towards labor market and migration of young women and men in Nepal, impact of their migration in the development of country. Though migration of youth is the cause of limited job opportunity in Nepal, remittance has helped in economic growth of country. For the economic development of country, country should have sufficient and decent jobs for both men and women.

This new understanding of economic growth and development will help me a lot while working in the development projects in my country. As my background is development practitioner, I wish to work and serve my country for its betterment. The way of learning this course was quite different from other course, thus it helped me a lot to understand easily about the economic situation of my country comparing with other countries.

References:

ADB: Asian Development Outlook 2014 (Mandaluyong City, 2014).

Nepal Rastra Bank, http://www.nrb.org.np/.

Nepal Central Bureau of Statistics: Annual GDP 2013-14 Report (Kathmandu, 2014).

Nepal Central Bureau of Statistics: National Labour Force Survey 1998/99 and 2008.

Nepal Central Bureau of Statistics and National Planning Commission Secretariat, Government of Nepal: Report on National Labour Force Survey 2008 (Kathmandu, 2009)

R. Islam: Nepal: Addressing the employment challenge through the sectoral pattern of growth (Kathmandu, ILO, 2014).

S. Sharma, S. Pandey, D. Pathak and B. Sijapati-Basnett: State of Migration in Nepal, Research Report VI (Kathmandu: Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility, 2014).

World Bank: Migration and Remittances data, http://go.worldbank.org/092X1CHHD0, accessed on 23 September 2014.