Job opportunities in the private sector have significantly expanded in Kenya in September at a faster rate for the first in the year since January.
A survey shows that companies increased their workforce for the fifth month in a row, with their salaries scale growing fastest in three months as a way of motivating the employees.
Stanbic Bank Kenya’s Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) – which tracks performance in key economic sectors – established rising cost of living negatively impacted consumer spending and new orders for September.
However, the survey — which tracks performance in key economic sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, construction, wholesale and retail, services and mining — found rising living costs hurt consumer spending and new orders for September.
“All five sectors ( agriculture, mining, wholesale and retail services, manufacturing, and construction) added to their workforces during the month,” the survey said.
“Capacity pressures led firms to increase their staffing levels at the strongest rate since January.”
On the contrary, the report showed that the growth in the business deals was slowest in September since the private sector activities started gaining momentum after a decline that followed the last round of stiffer Covif-19 containment measures in April.
The overall PMI reading which looks into the monthly private sector activity dropped to 50.4 in September from 51.1 in August. This showed that the economic recovery of the country stayed above the 50 mark which separates growth from a drop.
“Business conditions continued to improve in September, but at the slowest pace in the past five months due to rising inflation,” Kuria Kamau, a fixed income and currency strategist at Stanbic Bank, wrote in the PMI report as reported by Business Daily.
“Firms hiked output prices to protect their profit margins following a rise in fuel prices during the month.”
Inflationary pressure
Late last month, Kenya’s Central Bank held its benchmark lending rate at 7.0%, and its monetary policy committee noted that has seen emerging local and global inflationary pressures.
“Despite improvements in the levels of employment and purchases, the future outlook for output continues to be relatively low on account of uncertainty around inflation and Covid-19,” Kamau said in the report.
Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) also noted that Kenya was experiencing gradual growth in employment in three months through September, an indication that the economy was recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic shock.
The increase in employment opportunities is good news to job seekers who lost their jobs at the onset of the pandemic and the youthful Kenyans entering into the job market from colleges.
