Releasing the annual report of the Sri Lanka Labour Force Survey (LFS) for 2016, Dr. A. J. Satharasinghe, Director General of the Department of Census and Statistics said the labour force for 2016 has been estimated as 8.3 million.
The overall unemployment rate reported in 2016 was 4.4 percent. The rate was 2.9 percent for males 7 percent for females. The highest unemployment rate was reported from youth (persons in age 15-24 years) and it was 21.6 percent. The reported female unemployment rate (7 %) was considerably higher than that of male (2.9%).
This was about 54 percent of the total working age population, of 15.4 million persons (age 15 years and above). Of this labour force about 7.9 million were reported as employed and 0.36 million were reported as unemployed. Population not in labour force was about 7.1 million. The estimated labour force participation rate (LFPR) was 53.8 percent and this was 75.1percent for males and 35.9 percent for females.
As per the annual report majority of the working age females were not in labour force (5.4 million). However, the results show that within this economically inactive group of females, about 2.4 percent had shown some interest to join the labour force. This is defined as potential female labour force and was about 0.13 million. Further, the report reveals that about 79,680 males were also in potential labour force.
Accordingly, the estimated total potential labour force who is likely to join the labour force with encouraging strategies was 210,484 in 2016.
Majority of the employed population were males, it was about 5.1 million, and reported female employed population was about 2.8 million.
In addition, the survey reveals that majority of employed population engaged in services sector (46.5%) and followed by Agriculture (27.1%) and Industries (26.4%) sector.
Further, the report reveals that out of the total employed population about 60 percent was working in informal sector. This percentage in Agriculture sector was 87.5 percent and in Non-agriculturesector, the percentage was 50.1 percent.
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