The United Nations T r a d e a n d Development says l ea st -developed countries (LDC), including Malawi, face an unprecedented employment challenge.
According to the published 2025 Unctad Least Developed Countries Report, between now and 2050, LDCs will need to create jobs for around 13.2 million new labour market entrants every year, making employment creation a defining constraint for development strategies.
In observes that while services have absorbed much of the growing workforce, job growth has not been matched by income gains, leaving working poverty widespread, underscoring the gap between having a job and earning a decent living.
At the same time, labour productivity in the average least developed country is 11 times lower than in the median developed economy.
In an accompany i ng statement to the report, Unctad Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan observed that too
much of employment remains concentrated in low-productivity, informal activities – work that sustains survival but does not build prosperity.
She said: “Working poverty remains widespread. The challenge is not just more jobs, but also better ones. The gaps are stark. The digital economy is booming, but largely outside the
least developed countries.”
Unctad data shows that at 67.9 percent, working poverty rate, as the proportion of the employed population living in poverty despite being employed, in Malawi is way above the LDC average of 30.9.
On the other hand, services exports estimated at $0.5 billion in 2023, constituted 3.7
percentage of gross domestic product (GDP).
Earlier, economist Bond Mtembezeka observed that Malawi has not been performing
population growth rate and real gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate averaging 2.5 percent. well economically with the
He said: “The difference of the two parameters has resulted in almost zero-change in standards of living.
“The other dimension is the real incomes. Inflation has battered Malawi for the longest now and that has tended to erode people’s disposable incomes which [incomes] have remained relatively low.
“So, you will find that a person is working but with little to show for. The incomes are basically hand-to-mouth kind.”
To promote services exports to reverse the deteriorating trend and to ensure that services contribute significantly to the generation of foreign exchange, employment, incomes and poverty reduction in Malawi, the Malawi Government formulated the National Export Strategy that runs from 2021 to 2026.
The strategy was motivated by the global trends where services are playing an increasingly important role in both developed and developing economies
