From certificate to career: closing the skills mismatch

On a recent visit to Chattogram I met a young man who had completed a four-year diploma in mechanical technology. He was proud of his certificate. But three months on, he was still unemployed. "I learned what was in the syllabus," he told me. "But I don't know if it's what the factory needs."

That gap, between what young people are taught and what employers need is, in my view, the single biggest obstacle to Bangladesh realising its demographic dividend. Certification matters because it allows employers to trust that a worker has the skills they carry out the job. But that trust only works when qualifications are built on clear standards, assessed properly and recognised across institutions and sectors. This is why the Bangladesh National Qualifications Framework (BNQF) is so important. It provides the common language through which educators, trainers, assessors and employers can speak to each other.

The scale of the problem

Nearly two million young Bangladeshis enter the labour market each year. Roughly a third of those aged 15–34 is neither working, studying, nor training. A startling figure. These are young people in Khulna, Sylhet, Rangamati, Dhaka and elsewhere in Bangladesh, who currently remain bereft of employment prospects

Too often, the focus of skills development has been to build more training centres and enrol more students. But enrolment does not equal employability and a guaranteed pathway to employment - not if the training does not correspond to industry demand. The right question is not how many people we train, but whether that training leads to a job.

Three shifts Bangladesh's skills system needs

Training must adjust quickly to the needs of the labour market and the evolving demand. Curricula should be built from occupational standards and labour market evidence, with employers involved in defining the tasks, competencies and assessment criteria. Training should not start with the syllabus; it should start with an analysis of the work people are expected to perform.

Recognise the skills people already have. Through Recognition of Prior Learning, apprenticeships and modular courses, we see garment workers, returnee migrants and mothers re-entering work. They already have gained skills in the workplace, although they may not hold a formal skills certificate. Certifying those existing skills, under BNQF, can open doors faster than training from scratch.

Teach soft skills. Employers consistently highlight the same skills gaps: communication, problem-solving, teamwork, digital literacy, the ability to learn on the job. These soft skills are frequently what makes the difference for employers when choosing between two candidates holding the same certificate, and these soft skills need to be taught, not assumed.

Closer coordination

We share the responsibility for strengthening the skills system. Training projects should be designed around the BNQF so that graduates receive qualifications employers and institutions can understand, trust and use for further progression. When training runs outside the national framework, the value of certificates becomes unclear. Similarly, investment in factories, industrial parks and infrastructure projects should be linked from the outset with a “workforce plan” to prepare, certify and recruit local workers for the jobs being created.

The ILO will work with the Government, employers and partners to align investments with a corresponding skills development strategy and to anchor every skills development project to the national qualifications system

Three groups we cannot leave behind

Young women sometimes face training schedules that assume unlimited mobility, and workplaces not designed with their safety in mind. That is not equal opportunity. Every taka spent making training, workplaces and wider employment genuinely accessible to women is among the highest-return investments Bangladesh can make.

Persons with disabilities remain largely absent from mainstream skills programmes, not for lack of ability, but for lack of accessible training centres, adapted materials and employers willing to make reasonable accommodations. Inclusion cannot be an add-on project; it has to be designed into every training programme and every workplace from the start.

Returnee migrant workers come home each year with skills, discipline and savings earned overseas, and too often no pathway to use any of it. It is a huge waste of talent and potential. Reintegration support, access to finance, and recognition of skills gained abroad belong at the centre of national skills policy, not at its margins.

A shared responsibility

This is not the Government's job alone, or the ILO's, for that matter. We want employers to proactively engage in skills development to shape the qualifications of the current and future workforce and help design curricula. Training institutions must measure success by job placement, not only enrolment. Those funding training programmes must coordinate on the basis of the national qualifications system rather than running on parallel tracks. And people – young and old – must keep learning and upgrading their skills as labour market demands continue to evolve.

Bangladesh has the young population every economy hopes for. What it does not yet have, fully, is a skills system built around one simple test: did this training lead to decent work? Until we can answer yes for the great majority of young people who go through it, the conversation about skills development is not finished.

The ILO will keep working alongside Bangladesh's Government, employers and training institutions to close that gap, because a certificate that doesn't lead to a job is not a credential. It's a promise that hasn't yet been kept.