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Tajikistan
Labor
In 1991 some 1.95 million people were regularly employed outside
the home in Tajikistan. However, about 2.4 million Tajikistanis
were classified as being of working age. Of those who worked outside
the home, 22 percent were employed in industry; 43 percent in
agriculture; 18 percent in health care and social services; 6
percent in commerce, food services, state procurement, and "material-technical
supply and sales"; 5 percent in transportation; 2 percent in the
government bureaucracy; and 4 percent in miscellaneous services.
In the 1980s, light industry continued to employ the largest
proportion of industrial workers, 38.6 percent. The processing
of food and livestock feed employed an additional 11.7 percent.
Machine building and metal-working employed 19.7 percent. Three
of Tajikistan's main areas of heavy industrial development employed
rather small proportions of the industrial work force: chemicals
and petrochemicals, 7.4 percent; nonferrous metallurgy, 5.4 percent;
and electric power, 2.4 percent.
One of the most serious economic problems in the late 1980s
and early 1990s was unemployment. Unemployment and underemployment
remained extensive after the civil war, and the republic's high
birth rate led observers to predict that the number of unemployed
people would continue to grow through 2000. Tajikistan's designation
in the Soviet economy as primarily a producer of raw materials
meant that until 1992 agriculture was expected to provide the
bulk of employment opportunities for the population. However,
the limited amount of arable land and the fast growth of the rural
population made further absorption of labor impossible by the
1990s (see Agriculture, this ch.). Although Tajikistan had the
resources to increase its production of consumer goods, Soviet
economic planning did not develop as much light industry in the
republic as the human and material resources could have supported.
Two of Tajikistan's largest industrial complexes, which produced
chemicals and aluminum, were capital-intensive and provided relatively
few jobs.
Unemployment is a particular problem for the republic's young
people. Roughly three-quarters of the graduates of general education
middle schools (which most students attend) do not go on to further
education (see Education, this ch.). Upon entering the job market
with such basic qualifications, many cannot find employment. A
disproportionate number of young Tajikistanis enter low-paying
manual jobs; in 1989 about 40 percent of the agricultural labor
force was below age thirty. By the end of the Soviet era, however,
a growing number of Tajikistan's young people could not find employment
even in agriculture. The paucity and low quality of schools at
the vocational level and higher schools prevented those institutions
from improving the employment prospects of large numbers of potential
workers. In the 1980s, a Soviet campaign to shift labor into "labor
deficit" regions in the European republics or in Siberia met with
vocal opposition.
With skilled workers leaving the country in the mid-1990s, industrial
and professional jobs, most notably in engineering, often go unfilled.
Shortages have been especially acute in light industry, construction,
health care, transportation, engineering, and education. The exodus
of qualified workers intensified in the early 1990s. In 1992 and
1993, an estimated 123,000 specialists with higher education,
mostly Russians, left Tajikistan.
Data as of March 1996
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