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the change appears rather large. This is because the economy has experienced a substantial slowdown in growth constrained by persistent uncertainty surrounding political and security transition, increased levels
of conflict and a downturn in aid. The change is also more pronounced in urban areas than in rural areas, and is insignificant for Kuchis. This urban-rural-Kuchi pattern is again plausible, given the reduction of
foreign aid,
foreign organisations and troops, which is most likely to have first affected urban residents’ employment, and secondly, and often more indirectly, rural employment; the Kuchi, being much less
involved in the paid market economy were probably the least affected. Also, people who depended on the employment related to foreign presence may also be better able to be
– for some time at least – unemployed, rather than underemployed. With time, however, we may expect the number of underemployed to rise if
the urban economy fails to pick up and re-employ the currently unemployed.
5.3.3 Characteristics of the employed and underemployed
This section looks more closely at the nature of employment in Afghanistan by describing the characteristics of the employed in terms of education, job status, economic sector of employment, occupation, hours of
work and earnings. Note that in the discussion in this section, the characteristics of the underemployed are described together with those who are employed.
Educational attainment
Since a worker’s skills endowment is critical to his or her capacity for productive work, which in turn underlies earning potential and the likelihood of obtaining decent work, we first describe Afghanistan’s
employed workforce in terms of its educational attainment.
Figure 5.7
shows the preponderance of those who have not been to school at all in the workforce. But while 61 percent of the entire employed workforce
has not been to school, this proportion varies widely by sex and economic sector. Higher proportions of urban men and women are considerably more educated than their rural and Kuchi counterparts, but in each
sector, women are far less educated than men. The gender gap is noticeably narrower in urban areas, but rural women are proportionately slightly better educated than Kuchi men.
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Table 5.4: Labour market indicators, by survey, and by residence, sex
a
Residence, NRVA 2007-08
ALCS 2013-14 sex
Labour force Employment-
Un- Inactivity
Labour force Employment-
Un- Inactivity
participation to-population
employment rate
participation to-population
employment rate
rate ratio
rate rate
ratio rate
National 65.4
56.7 13.5
34.6 56.7
44.2 22.0
43.3 Male
84.8 75.8
10.8 15.2
81.7 67.4
17.5 18.3
Female 45.1
36.7 18.7
54.7 28.9
18.5 36.0
71.1 Urban
48.4 42.6
12.4 51.5
50.3 38.0
24.4 49.7
Male 77.5
70.6 9.2
22.5 78.4
64.8 17.4
21.6 Female
18.4 13.6
26.2 81.5
21.4 10.5
50.7 78.6
Rural 69.6
60.0 13.9
30.4 58.2
45.4 22.0
41.8 Male
86.5 76.8
11.4 13.5
82.4 67.5
18.1 17.6
Female 51.8
42.4 18.2
47.9 30.6
20.2 34.1
69.4 Kuchi
77.5 69.4
10.6 22.5
70.3 62.3
11.4 29.7
Male 91.0
84.3 7.5
9.0 89.5
80.6 9.9
10.5 Female
62.7 53.3
15.5 37.0
48.6 41.6
14.5 51.4
a
Based on population of 16 years and over and using the weekmonth ratio of the same indicators estimated from the data of NRVA 2011-12 to adjust the monthly figures for 2007-08 to weekly figures.
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Figure 5.7: Employed and underemployed men and women, by residence, and by educational attainment in percentages
