A recent report from the World Bank, called ‘Kenya Poverty and Equity Assessment 2023,’ tells us that most jobs in Kenya come from the service sector. This was true both before and after the pandemic. The report also mentions that the Agricultural sector had a lot of jobs during the pandemic.

The report says that the positive news in the job market is because of advancements in information technology, business services, banking, warehousing, insurance, distribution, logistics, education, health, tourism, recreation, finance, construction, engineering, and infrastructure.

The World Bank thinks that services are becoming a big part of Kenya’s economic growth. From 2012 to 2021, services made up 70% of the increase in the country’s economic output. Out of the ten fastest-growing sectors, all except construction were services.

If you live in a city, you likely had more job opportunities in the service sector. But the report also says that people in urban areas who are not poor usually get jobs that are not related to farming.

The report raises a worry that many Kenyans work in sectors that are not very productive. 80% of people work in areas like agriculture, trade, accommodation and food services, social services, and other services.

The report points out that 84% of people from poor households work in these less productive sectors. Sadly, the poorest people had more job losses during the pandemic and a slower recovery. The report says that between 2019 and 2020, the number of working-age people with jobs stayed the same. But if we look at the whole country, we might miss that things were different for the poor and depending on where they lived. While people who were not poor got more jobs, the poor had fewer jobs. More young people from non-poor families, between 15 and 24 years old, got jobs. This suggests that non-poor families might have used more family members to work during the pandemic to make more money. In rural areas, poor people didn’t see much change in jobs during the pandemic.

When the pandemic started, jobs in agriculture went up by 9%, and jobs in services went down by 10%. By 2021, most jobs for the bottom 80% of city folks were still in agriculture, but jobs went back to the same levels as before the pandemic for the richest city folks.

To make things better, the Kenya Poverty and Equity Assessment (KPEA) report gives President William Ruto three suggestions:

• Connect poor people to the country’s growth and economic changes.
• Help families deal better with bad weather and use money in a way that includes everyone.
• Use the country’s money policy to support fairness and include everyone.