Jobs jump by 5pc in Uhuru's final year to 816,600

Youth working at the construction site at the Africities conference arena in Mamboleo in Kisumu county folds column metals during work on February 09,2022. [Denish Ochieng, standard]

The economy generated 816,600 jobs in 2022, a 4.45 per cent jump from the previous year, handing former President Uhuru Kenyatta's regime a significant annual performance in his last year in office.

The economy's job creation momentum under the Uhuru regime during his final year in office however slowed down from two years earlier, when jobs under his government grew by 924,900 or 5.31 per cent between 2020 and 2021 on economic recovery following the drop in Covid-19 numbers.

Data released by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) on Wednesday, shows that despite sluggish economic growth of 4.8 per cent last year-from a high of 7.6 per cent in 2021, the number of new jobs generated last year stood at 816,600.

This saw the country's total employment in the modern and informal sectors, go up from 18.3 million in 2021 to 19.1 million in 2022.

The jobs growth defied the August 9 election jitters and continued fiscal pressures linked to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, economic fallout and the lingering effects of Covid-19.

"I note that a total of 816.6 thousand new jobs were generated despite the slowdown in the economy in 2022," said Treasury Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung'u yesterday during the launch of the 2023 Economic Survey in Nairobi.

Retail sectors

Of all the 2022 new jobs, education was the single largest contributor, generating one in every five jobs created. Other top job creators were in the manufacturing, health and ICT, transport and retail sectors.

"The sectors that contributed to employment creation were education (19,900), manufacturing (15,800), health (9,300), wholesale and retail trade (9,100), ICT (8,500) and transport (5,300)," said the Treasury boss.

Kenya's economy has a history of slowing down during election years when firms put investment decisions on hold, pending a return to normalcy.

President Uhuru left office on September 13, 2022, after serving two constitutional terms. The KNBS data shows the informal sector created the most jobs at 702,900 compared to the formal sector taking the total jobs in the informal sector to 16.0 million jobs. "Effectively, the MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) economy is one of the major sources of employment creation and income generation for the bulk of Kenyans," said Prof Ndung'u.

The KNBS data shows employment in the modern sector on the other hand recorded a growth of 3.7 per cent in 2022 compared to an increase of 5.9 per cent in 2021.

In 2022 a total of 113,700 jobs were created in the modern sector.

The total number of self-employed and unpaid family workers within the modern sector was estimated to have increased by 2.7 per cent to 168,100 in 2022. Last year, several public and private sector entities hired temporary staff, to perform elections-related tasks.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission itself hired at least 300,000 temporary staff for the 2022 polls, among them voter registration assistants, clerks and constituency ICT clerks.

Financial services

According to the KNBS data, employees of multilateral bodies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) remained the highest-paid in the formal sector, with those in financial services coming second, official data shows.

The Economic Survey shows the average monthly pay for those employed at organisations such as the World Bank, the United Nations and the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) stood at Sh325,348 last year.

Workers in electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply rose to the second spot as the second highest earners. They draw an average of Sh182,346 per month. They dislodged private financial and insurance firms from the second spot which paid workers Sh181,617 a month on average in the same period.

According to the KNBS data, the leading industries providing wage employment in the private sector in 2022 were manufacturing, agriculture, forestry and fishing, and wholesale and retail trade and repair of motor vehicles accounting for 15.9, 14.4 and 12.8 per cent of the total private sector employment, respectively.

Leading activities with the highest employment levels in the public sector were education, public administration and defence, as well as compulsory social security which accounted for 42.8 per cent and 35.7 per cent of total employment in the sector, respectively.