NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 5 – Kenyan businesses added to their workforces for the fourth consecutive month in January.
This is according to a survey by Stanbic Bank which reveals that the rate of growth quickened from the previous survey period and was just shy of October’s recent high.
Increased workloads and backlog volumes were cited as the main factors leading firms to hire new staff.
“Capacity at Kenyan firms came under pressure in January, as the level of incomplete business rose at a solid rate over the month,” the survey finds.
Higher backlogs were generally linked to a rise in new work inflows, with some respondents also delays in the arrival of inputs.
The Stanbic Bank Kenya PMITM is compiled by IHS Markit from responses to questionnaires sent to purchasing managers in a panel of around 400 private sector companies in the country.
This comes even as a report released in December 2020 by Kenya National Bureau of Statistics indicates that nearly 1.18 million young unemployed Kenyans had given up the search for a job in the third quarter of the year.
According to the report, 54.95 percent of the 2.15 million people aged between 20 and 34 who were out of work did not attempt to look for a job four weeks to the end of September.
The number of youthful Kenyans who were not searching for jobs in the July-September 2020 period was slightly lower than 1.58 million or 54.02 percent of 2.93 million jobless youth in the second quarter.
