Country Report Liberia June 2011

The domestic economy: Economic growth and FDI is not creating enough jobs

The government's efforts to turn the high economic growth and foreign direct investment of recent years into jobs are not having much success. Unemployment stands at more than 95%, according to the recently released 2010 annual report of the Ministry of Labour. The report states that the private sector currently employs less than 70,000 people, despite the billions of dollars that have been invested in mining and agriculture in particular. Public-sector employment is calculated at approximately 32,000, meaning that around 100,000 people out of an estimated workforce of 2.7m are in formal employment. However this unemployment rate does not consider the informal sector, which accounts for the majority of economic activity in the country, and most people earn a living from subsistence agriculture.

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