163,000 JOBS CLAIM COLLAPSES UNDER SCRUTINY: Gov’t Data Clashes With Gambia’s Labour Reality! By Madi Jobarteh!
The government’s claim that it created 163,000 jobs by the first quarter of 2026 raises serious questions of credibility, transparency, and statistical accuracy. Given the labour market realities of the Gambia and the findings of the Gambia Labour Force Survey (GLFS) 2025, such a figure appears practically impossible without corresponding structural changes in employment indicators across the country.
According to the GLFS 2025 (https://www.gbosdata.org/…/594-glfs-2025-labour-force…), the Gambia’s total labour force stands at approximately 675,470 people, with total employed persons estimated at 619,620. This means that a claim of 163,000 new jobs amounts to roughly 25% of the country’s total labour force. No economy, including the world’s largest and fastest-growing economies, records job creation at such a scale within such a short period without massive industrial expansion, major foreign direct investment inflows, or extraordinary economic transformation. None of these conditions currently exists in the Gambia.
More importantly, if 163,000 jobs had indeed been created, the impact would be visible in national employment indicators, particularly among youth and women, who continue to experience high unemployment and underemployment. Yet there has been no publicly available evidence of any dramatic decline in unemployment rates or labour underutilization in the country. Communities across the country continue to face rising youth unemployment, increased irregular migration pressures, and widespread economic hardship.
The claim is reportedly attributed to the Gambia Bureau of Statistics (GBoS). However, GBoS has not published any 2026 labour force report or statistical bulletin confirming such figures. In the absence of an official report, methodology, or dataset, the government’s statement remains unsupported and unverifiable.
The numbers become even more questionable when placed against the actual size of the Gambian workforce. The total government workforce is estimated at no more than 40,000 employees, while the combined personnel of the Gambia Armed Forces and the Gambia Police Force are unlikely to exceed 10,000.
Furthermore, the GLFS 2025 estimates the formal workforce in both the public and private sectors combined at roughly 116,700 workers. It therefore beats imagination how the government could create 163,000 additional jobs within a few months.
Equally important, the GLFS 2025 indicates that approximately 500,000 Gambians work in the informal sector. If 163,000 new jobs were genuinely created, the government must explain where these workers came from, which sectors absorbed them, and whether these jobs are formal, informal, temporary, seasonal, or permanent.
The government cannot merely make sweeping claims without evidence. Transparency and accountability require that the authorities provide a detailed sector-by-sector breakdown of the alleged jobs created, the methodology used to calculate the figures, the regional distribution of the jobs, the percentage of male and female beneficiaries, the distinction between permanent, temporary, and informal jobs, and the institutions or projects responsible for generating these jobs.
Public trust in national statistics and governance depends on accuracy, honesty, and evidence-based communication. Employment figures are too important to be reduced to political propaganda or headline statistics without factual substantiation. As a government that has just created a misinformation and disinformation response centre, it is pertinent that when they make such claims, they provide full transparency.
I hereby challenge the ministers of Finance, Employment, Information as well as GBOS to share the relevant report on which they make the claim.
For The Gambia, Our Homeland
