KNBS to begin publishing quarterly employment data

What you need to know:

The Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey set for early next year will help update poverty, jobs data.
Other surveys planned include those on micro, small and medium enterprises, as well as a labour force review.

The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics will from next year start providing updates on poverty and employment levels every three months.

This is part of a larger effort to track and boost the country’s socio-economic development.

KNBS officials said Tuesday that the data will be released to the public quarterly after completion of a new survey on Kenyan household budgets planned for early next year.

The updates are aimed at helping Government policymakers, the private sector and Kenyans take stock of job creation and poverty levels every three months.

“The Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey is set for early next year and will form the basis of updating poverty and employment statistics,” KNBS director-general Zachary Mwangi said during an African Statistics Day event at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre in Nairobi.

Presently, information on new job opportunities is captured annually in the Economic Survey while details of unemployment levels remain hazy.

Reports have for years indicated that joblessness rate stands unchanged at about 40 per cent with the figure rising among youth.

“We want to use data to anchor development and address economic challenges,” said the director-general.

Kenya’s economy is faced with the burden of slow job creation, which has for years failed to match the rate at which thousands of graduates are poured into the market every year various institutions.

The bureau is optimistic the planned releases will help stakeholders find solutions to economic ills. The announcement follows the recent launch of the Kenya Socio-economic Atlas, mapping social and economic aspects of households in the country’s 47 counties.

Mwangi said the push to widen the data-sets available to the public was in line with this year’s African Statistics Day theme “Open data for accountability and inclusiveness.”

Other surveys planned in future include those on micro, small and medium enterprises, alongside a labour force review, which will culminate in the establishment of a skills bank to address manpower gaps.

A census of industrial production is also on KNBS's radar.