Dar es Salaam. Tanzania’s new Integrated Labour Force Survey (ILFS) 2024 has painted a picture of a labour market in transition, but also exposes two stubborn structural barriers that now pose the greatest threat to the country’s march toward Dira 2050: soaring informality and widening wage disparities across gender, geography and education.
Released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in November 2025, the survey, conducted throughout 2024 across Mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar, offers the most robust, comparable and harmonised labour market data the country has produced in recent years.
With Tanzania preparing for a new era of long-term development strategic planning, the report lands at a defining moment: Labour participation improving, but inequality still a defining factor.
The ILFS shows the Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) has risen from 72.1 percent in 2020/21 to 73.2 percent in 2024, signalling better engagement of the working-age population.
However, this improvement conceals enduring inequalities. While 79.6 percent of men participate in the labour market, only 67.4 percent of women do so.
Participation among persons with disabilities lags significantly at 54.4 percent, compared to 75.4 percent for those without disabilities.
Youth participation remains particularly weak. Only 60.3 percent of young people aged 15–24 are in the labour force, a gap that experts say undermines Tanzania’s future economic strength and its hopes of maximising the demographic dividend.
Informality nearing 95 percent
Despite modest gains in employment-reflected in the rise of the Employment-to-Population Ratio from 65.8 percent to 68.7 percent, the overwhelming majority of Tanzanians remain trapped in informal and vulnerable work.
According to the ILFS, informality has grown from 92.5 percent in 2020/21 to 94.6 percent in 2024. Women are slightly more affected than men, though the burden is high across all demographic groups.
The structure of employment reveals the scale of precarity
Nearly three-quarters (74.8 percent) of workers are categorised as ‘dependent contractors’, and only 7.7 percent hold salaried jobs.
Contributing family workers account for 16.9 percent, with women disproportionately represented, a reflection of entrenched gender roles in unpaid domestic labour.
Sectoral employment patterns, meanwhile, reveal slow but steady transformation. Agriculture still employs 54.2 percent of the workforce, down from 60.4 percent in 2020/21.
Services have grown to 35.5 percent, while industry has inched up to 10.3 percent, signalling early diversification but also the need for faster structural change.
One of the most notable improvements is in literacy. National illiteracy levels fell from 17.8 percent to 11.5 percent, with rural areas and young people experiencing the most progress.
Yet women remain more affected than men, and persons with disabilities face illiteracy rates more than double the national average.
Average monthly wages increased from Sh393,861 to Sh477,241, a sign of improving labour incomes. Yet the ILFS reveals that wage inequality is widening, not narrowing.
Men consistently earn more than women across all education levels. Urban workers, especially those in Dar es Salaam, earn significantly more than rural workers.
Even among workers with similar education or skills, those in rural and semi-urban areas remain disadvantaged.
These wage differentials, experts warn, are becoming entrenched and risk entrenching cycles of poverty and exclusion, particularly for women, youth and rural households.
Unemployment remains moderate, but underemployment—workers wanting more hours than they are able to secure remains high, especially in agriculture-heavy regions.
Long-term unemployment among youth continues to weigh heavily on productivity and innovation. These dynamics, the ILFS cautions, directly undermine Tanzania’s long-term vision of building a modern, competitive and knowledge-based economy.
Ignoring informality will derail Dira 2050
A labour economist at the University of Dar es Salaam, Dr Lydia Magesa, describes the soaring informality rate as a national crisis.
“The data clearly shows that while participation is improving, the dominance of informality is locking millions of workers out of social protection and productivity gains. Tanzania cannot achieve Dira 2050 with a workforce that is nearly 95 percent informal,” she said.
Apolitical analyst, Mr David Msuya, argued that the survey points to deeper governance and policy coordination challenges.
“Gender gaps, youth unemployment and the marginalisation of persons with disabilities point to systemic issues. Strengthening local government capacity and accountability is key to ensuring that labour market reforms reach communities,” he said.
From an international development perspective, an international relations scholar, Dr Angela Moyo, said the ILFS shows where Tanzania stands in a rapidly evolving global labour landscape.
“As global value chains shift and digital skills become essential, the ILFS shows progress, but also exposes how far we still need to go to be competitive by 2050,” she noted.
The ILFS recommends targeted interventions: speeding up enterprise formalisation, deepening skills development, closing wage gaps, expanding social protection, and pushing sectoral diversification into higher-productivity industries.
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