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who did not attend school cited the need to work as the main reason, 37 percent of girls who did not attend school did not do so because they were not allowed to. While child labour is strongly associated with
household poverty, engaging in child labour perpetuates the cycle of poverty, as working children are unable to acquire necessary skills and remain healthy, which are in turn likely to retard their capacity to
earn enough to get out of poverty themselves in the future.
The analysis suggests that both demand and supply side measures are necessary to promote the growth of decent employment opportunities in Afghanistan. The demand for labour needs to be increased through the
aggressive promotion of entrepreneurship and small businesses catering to export markets as well as to domestic and local markets. The agricultural sector needs to be made more productive by providing better
inputs, such as improved seeds and fertilizer; storage facilities; creating functioning local markets; and rebuilding transport and communication networks to access more distant markets. At the same time,
workers must also be equipped with demand-driven skills so that they can create productive self- employment opportunities, or else take up the job opportunities created by a growing business class.
5.1 Introduction
Most Afghan households depend on the market work of their members for income to meet basic needs. Rent, forms of zakat and remittances from household members who have moved elsewhere for work are
also useful sources of additional income for some. But the vast majority of Afghans get by with subsistence- level productive activities, family work, or precarious, informal work where very long or very few hours
are the norm. Therefore, standard labour market indicators used for international comparisons cannot adequately capture the true nature of employment outcomes in Afghanistan. Hence, beginning with the
report
National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment 2011-12
CSO 2014, the CSO has developed and used definitions that yield a more nuanced picture of Afghanis
tan’s labour market. Accordingly, this report too tabulates and analyses labour market indicators on the basis of the new national definitions which are set
out in
Table 5.1
below, along with the corresponding international definitions. The most fundamental choice that Afghans of working age face in the labour market is whether to engage
in market work or not, that is, whether or not to participate in the labour market. Those who decide to participate in the labour market face two outcomes: they may find employment that they are willing to take
up
– in which case they become part of the employed workforce, or they may not, in which case they will continue to seek work and will be regarded as unemployed. However, those who take up work experience
a further set of employment outcomes: they may be working at least eight hours a week and may be satisfied with that, in which case they are regarded as being gainfully employed. Alternatively, they may be working
less than 40 hours a week and be willing and available to work additional hours, in which case they are considered underemployed. All those who are willing and able to work more than their current levels of
engagement are those who are not gainfully employed. Thus, the underemployed and the unemployed together constitute that part of the labour force which is not gainfully employed. In seeking employment,
however, individuals may migrate from either the place of their birth, or from other locations to which they had previously migrated looking for work. They may also undertake to migrate seasonally for purposes of
employment. This migrant workforce is an important subset of the country’s labour force. This chapter on labour market outcomes in Afghanistan is organised according to this basic framework of
participation decisions and employment outcomes. Thus, section 5.2 describes the initial choice that Afghans of working age have made in whether or not to participate in the labour force, and estimates stocks
and shares by sex, age cohort and residence. Section 5.3 first presents an overview of employment,
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underemployment and unemployment and then takes a closer look at the characteristics of the employed and underemployed. Section 5.4 looks at that subset of the workforce that has migrated in search of
employment, describing their characteristics of migrants and their labour market outcomes. The section also describes the situation with respect to seasonal migration. Section 5.5 estimates the prevalence and
characteristics of child labour in Afghanistan.
Table 5.1: Labour force definitions
National definitions International definitions
Employed All persons aged 14 and over who,
during the reference period of one week, were in paid employment or
self-employed and who worked at least eight hours.
Employed All persons aged 15 and over who,
during the reference period of one week, were in paid employment or
self-employed and who worked at least one hour.
Underemployed All persons aged 14 and over who,
during the reference period of one week, were:
a. working less than 40 hours
b. available to work additional
hours; and, c.
willing to work additional hours. Underemployed
All persons working hours of work that are insufficient in relation to
an alternative
employment situation in which the person is
willing and available to engage time-related underemployment.
Unemployed All persons aged 14 and over who,
during the reference period of one week, were:
Unemployed All persons aged 15 and over who,
during the reference period of one week, were
a. without any work or working less
than eight hours, and b.
seeking work. a.
without any work, i.e. were not in paid employment or self-
employment; b.
currently available for work; and,
c. seeking work.
Not gainfully employed
All persons aged 14 and over who, during the reference period of one
week, were unemployed or under- employed
Source: CSO 2014
5.2 Labour force participation
