The Bhutan We Think We Know

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FAQ

Why is wanting a government job the biggest predictor of unemployment in Bhutan?

In the National Statistics Bureau's study of youth unemployment, preferring a civil-service job over the private sector is the single strongest predictor of being unemployed — an odds ratio of 21 (a relative odds ratio, not an absolute unemployment rate). The mechanism is a queue: the civil service hires only about 2,000–2,500 new entrants a year, roughly 20–21% of the graduates produced annually, so about 80 of every 100 graduates will not get the government job they were trained to want — and many spend two to three years attempting the entrance exam before redirecting to the private sector or abroad.

The “21×” figure comes from the NSB’s logistic-regression analysis of labour-force data: among the individual predictors of unemployment, preferring civil service carries 21 times the odds of joblessness versus preferring private work. It is the most concentrated single data point in Bhutan’s youth-unemployment debate — but it is an odds ratio, not a claim that 21% of anyone is unemployed.

Underneath it sits simple arithmetic. The civil service can absorb only about one in five graduates each year. The other four compete for private-sector jobs that pay less and carry less social status — or hold out, unemployed, for a government seat that statistically will not come. The longer the queue, the longer the wait, and the wait itself is counted as unemployment.

That is the structural engine behind Paradox #46, and a major feeder of the emigration to Australia.

Primary sources