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Degree in one hand, placard in the other: the face of Kenya's jobs crisis
Formal wage employment growth in Kenya has declined sharply, from 6.0 per cent in 2021 to 2.8 per cent in 2025.
What you need to know:
- According to the Economic Survey 2026, Kenya created over 822,000 jobs in 2025.
- Of the 822,100 new positions recorded, 716,800 were informal.
- The formal sector employs only 3.3 million Kenyans in total, a figure that has grown by barely 400,000 over the past five years.
On a busy, chilly morning in Nairobi's central business district, a 37-year-old man stood quietly on the pavement, clutching a handwritten placard. It was not a protest in the conventional sense. Just a single, desperate message: he needed a job to provide for his family.
For years, Benson Kui has searched for employment. The search has yielded nothing.
"I studied at African Nazarene University from 2017 to 2023. I finished my studies," he says, carefully unfolding his certificates. He also trained at a college in Rongai, earning a diploma in hydroponics, skills he believed would secure him a stable future, but a future that never came.
"After school, I have never been employed. I have just been doing casual work," he explains. "It was so sad, sacrificing myself in school for all that time and never being employed."
His story is deeply personal. But it is not unique.
Jobs are growing. But not the kind graduates need
According to the Economic Survey 2026, released this week by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, Kenya created over 822,000 jobs in 2025. On paper, that signals a growing economy and expanding opportunity.
But beneath those numbers lies a more troubling reality. Nearly nine out of ten of those jobs were in the informal sector. Of the 822,100 new positions recorded, 716,800 were informal, things like casual labour, small-scale trade, and other forms of self-employment that, while essential for survival, rarely offer contracts, security, or a predictable income.
Formal wage employment, the kind that comes with a pay slip and pension contributions, grew by just 2.8 per cent in 2025, adding roughly 101,200 positions to an economy of over 55 million people. The formal sector employs only 3.3 million Kenyans in total, a figure that has grown by barely 400,000 over the past five years.
At the same time, formal wage employment growth has declined sharply, from 6.0 per cent in 2021 to 3.5 per cent in 2023, before a modest recovery to 2.8 per cent in 2025. For a country adding roughly two million people to its population every year, the maths paints a bleak reality for job seekers.
For graduates like Benson, the disconnect is disturbing. The education system promises upward mobility. The labour market increasingly offers only temporary alternatives.
"It is all about connections"
"It is all about connection," Benson says. "If you do not have it, you will not be lucky enough to get a good job, or even a job you studied for."
Despite years of applications, he has never secured stable employment. When opportunities came, they were short-lived.
"I used to work in clubs as a supervisor. The conditions were not okay. You just received a summary dismissal out of nowhere," he explains. "Maybe I get employed somewhere, they bring relatives, so I just get a summary dismissal."
His experience points to a persistent concern among job seekers: that networks and personal connections frequently outweigh qualifications and merit, particularly in a tight market where formal jobs are scarce and competition is fierce.
Like many others, he has turned to casual work to survive, labouring on construction sites and in fields, taking whatever comes.
"I have been doing casuals, maybe in the fields, in the construction sites," he says.
Survival, he says, is not the same as progress. He is a married man from a vulnerable family, and the pressure to provide grows every day.
"My family back home is depending on me," he says.
"That is why I decided to raise a concern today, so that at least I can help my family."
Don't call us, we will call you
Three months ago, he came close. He was contacted about a potential opportunity.
"I was told they will call me. Up to date, I am still waiting."
This situation is familiar among job seekers across Kenya: interviews that lead nowhere, promises that go silent, applications that disappear.
The Economic Survey 2026 captures something of this crisis in its earnings data. For four consecutive years, from 2021 to 2024, real average earnings per worker declined. Inflation was outpacing pay rises. It was only in 2025 that real earnings turned positive, recording a 2.0 per cent gain, driven largely by easing inflation rather than meaningful wage increases. The agricultural minimum wage, meanwhile, was frozen for the second consecutive year, remaining unchanged at an average of Sh10,714 per month.
Skills without a market
Despite the setbacks, Benson holds on to his abilities.
"I am good in hydroponics, planting crops without using soil," he says. "I am also an environmentalist. That is where I can comfortably say I am okay."
His skills sit in sectors that policymakers and development organisations regularly identify as central to Kenya's future, sustainable agriculture and environmental management. Yet without access to formal employment or structured pathways, those skills remain unused.
The government's own data hints at why. The Jitume Digital Programme, designed to connect young Kenyans to online work opportunities, saw the number of youths linked to online jobs fall from 8,062 in 2024 to 6,200 in 2025, a decline the survey attributes to "inadequate opportunities." Direct jobs created within Konza Technopolis, the government's flagship smart city project, collapsed from 3,000 in 2024 to 1,137 in 2025.
A generation caught in between
Kenya's labour market is often defined by a growing, educated youth population on one hand, and an economy that generates mostly informal work on the other.
The Economic Survey 2026 does not report a national underemployment rate. That figure, which captures the share of workers doing less work than they need or are qualified for, is measured separately in the Kenya Labour Force Survey.
What the economic survey does confirm, indirectly, is the scale of the problem: 83.8 per cent of all non-agricultural workers are in the informal sector, the vast majority in wholesale trade, retail, hotels, and restaurants, sectors dominated by hawkers, market vendors, and food stalls.
The man with the placard is not rejecting work. He has worked in fields, in casual roles, in unstable conditions. What he is searching for is something closer to stability. For now, he waits, not just for a phone call, but for an opportunity to turn effort into livelihood, and education into something more than a promise.
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