Numbers that Matter: Insights from a Complex Labor Market

My name is Chris Dowd. Before joining Google to work with products such as Maps, Research and Machine Intelligence, and Search, I studied International Relations and Economics with a fascination in emerging urban economies. I believe that data has the power to inform decisions and create opportunity in the most complex environments.

It can be challenging to see how daily transactions, job postings, and skill trainings ladder up to a tell a story about an economy as a whole. In many cases, numbers like GDP, GNI, or even Unemployment Rates do not capture the lived experience, or productivity that occurs at the frontier of an economy, especially in the markets where Kormo is available.

Increasingly, this transformation has been supported by digital platforms that remove barriers of geography and access to employment. According to the 2019 World Bank Development Report, Bangladesh contributes 15 percent to the global labor pool online by means of its 650,000 freelance workers. Remote work is only a small part of the equation.

For the last 2 years, Kormo has helped to match thousands of job seekers with short term, reliable employment. Our training courses have helped many users level up their skills, and watch their career advance. In the absence of reliable, real time data about the informal labor market, the last two years have provided the team at Kormo with the opportunity to develop a slightly different perspective on the numbers that matter when evaluating the health of the informal labor economy. This article will explore three statistics that help to tell a bigger story about the signs of an active informal economy.

1. It is great to have a high number of workers who return to the same employer. If an employer has a high number of employees that return for multiple jobs over the course of time, it is clear that the employer is attractive. This can be a result of competitive pay, good working environment, tasks that meet the skills of a particular subset of workers very closely, or simply because they always have available jobs. In any event, repeat workers helps to build trust and comfort between the parties allowing businesses to operate more efficiently.

An established hospitality firm in Bangladesh partners with Kormo to provide opportunities to its employees.

2. There is a positive impact when employers make jobs available to first time users. Many employers require specific skills in order to access certain jobs. For a first time user, college student just launching their career, or an infrequent user who many not be seeking more advanced roles, skills and experience can be a significant barrier to employment. Although many workers are on their way to further skill development, this can take time and often they are looking for immediate opportunities. Employers who offer opportunities that can be filled with limited training are often able to fill their positions quickly. Often, roles like Sales Assistant, Delivery Drivers, or Brand Promoters satisfy this criteria and can represent over 50% of the total listings in a given week.

Kormo Brand Ambassador meets with first time user in Bangladesh to explain how the platform works, and how they can find opportunities.

3. Workers are broadening their future prospects through online training and skill development. For Seekers, it is incredibly encouraging for the Kormo team to witness their journey on the platform. Many users will begin with work that does not require specialized skills, but set goals for more skilled opportunities and build their experience and training around being competitive for those future roles. This training can include hard skills, more experience, better language ability, or more interview practice.

For example, a 24 year old recent graduate in Bangladesh named Al-Amin found Kormo through Facebook. He proceeded to apply for 22 jobs, and was shortlisted to interview. Prior to his interview, Kormo posted interview tips that helped him feel prepared, confident, and capable of landing the job. He is now working as a Data Entry Operator in a BPO company.

Kormo operates in incredibly dynamic work environments in an effort to support the growth of the economies that we serve. This has forced the team to be creative in their understanding of the user experience, the barriers to employment, and the data that this journey produces for both seekers and employers on the platform.