Unemployment in Rwanda reaches 15.6%, hitting young people and women harder

Some 878,000 people were unemployed in August. The share of the working-age population in employment is also falling.

By Babatunde Adeyemi · 21 October 2026 · 1 min read

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Archive photo. View of Kigali city centre in Rwanda. Photo credit: Antoine R. Gasasira, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Unemployment rose to 15.6% in Rwanda in August 2026, from 13.4% a year earlier, according to the labour force survey published on Tuesday, 20 October, by the National Institute of Statistics. This rise of 2.2 percentage points represents around 878,000 people without work within a labour force estimated at 5.6 million.

Women have an unemployment rate of 18.3%, compared with 13.3% for men. Young people aged 16 to 30 are also hit harder, with a rate of 18.8%, compared with 13.1% for adults.

The share of working-age people in employment fell from 57% to 54% in one year. The institute counts 4.8 million people in employment in August 2026.

Labour underutilisation stands at 61.8%, compared with 56.7% a year earlier. Beyond unemployment, this indicator includes time-related underemployment and people likely to join the labour force. It affects women and young people more strongly.

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