FOR nearly two years after graduating from university, Brian Otieno believed his big break, a real job, would come through an email or a phone call.
Every morning, he would wake up in his rented room in Nairobi’s Eastlands, scroll through job sites and WhatsApp groups, update his CV and send out applications.
He applied for jobs in administration, sales, customer service, logistics and positions only tangentially connected to what he had studied.
But the responses remained painfully familiar: “We will contact you.”
“I would apply for five or 10 jobs in a week. Sometimes I would receive an email saying I was unsuccessful, but most of the time you hear nothing,” Otieno tells the Star.
After months without stable formal employment, he made a difficult decision. He leased a motorcycle and joined Nairobi’s vast army of boda boda riders.
Today, his degree is tucked away at home while his motorcycle has become his office.
On a good day, he earns enough to cover the boda boda lease charges, fuel, food and rent. On a bad day, particularly when business is slow or heavy rains disrupt movement, he returns home with little money.
But he has not abandoned his job search.
“My phone is always with me. When I get an alert about a vacancy, I still apply,” he says. “The boda boda is what is paying my bills, but I still hope to get a job related to my training.”
His story captures a growing reality for thousands of young Kenyans: graduation is no longer necessarily followed by employment. For many, it marks the beginning of another long and expensive journey in search of a paycheque.
Along Jogoo Road, Nairobi, Mercy Wanjiku, an actuarial science graduate, begins her workday long before many offices open.
Armed with a small fryer, cooking oil, potatoes and sausages, she sets up her roadside food business, serving office workers, boda boda riders, students and other passersby.
The business was not what she imagined when she completed her studies.
After graduating, Wanjiku spent months sending applications and travelling for interviews. She initially depended on her family for support as she waited for an opportunity.
Eventually, the financial pressure became too much.
“I could not keep asking for money to pay fare to interviews, buy bundles and print documents when I was not earning anything,” she says.
Wanjiku estimates she spent thousands of shillings on transport, internet data, CV preparation, photocopying certificates and professional clothing.
“When you are unemployed, every interview has a cost,” she says. “You may have to travel across Nairobi, sometimes you need new clothes, you need bundles to keep checking your email and job sites. Yet there is no guarantee you will get the job.”
She eventually borrowed money from relatives and started selling chips and sausages.
The business now provides her with an income, although she still considers it a temporary answer to a bigger question.
“I am proud that I can earn something and take care of myself, but I still apply for jobs. I did not study so that I could remain unemployed. I just reached a point where I had to survive,” Wanjiku says.
For David Mwangi, the road to employment literally led him to the wheel of a matatu.
The graduate spent more than a year applying for vacancies and attending interviews, repeatedly losing to candidates with more experience.
“The problem is that many employers want experience, but where are you supposed to get the experience if nobody gives you the first opportunity?” Mwangi asks.
Eventually, a friend connected him with a matatu owner who needed a driver.
“I am not ashamed of driving a matatu. It is honest work,” he says. “But there is still that question in your mind, after all the years of education, how long will it take before you get the opportunity you trained for?”
Mwangi says the experience requirement has become one of the biggest barriers facing young graduates.
“You find an entry-level job but it asks for two or three years of experience. Many graduates are left asking how they are supposed to begin.”
Kenya’s labour market is producing a paradox. Jobs are being created, but a significant share are in the informal economy. Earnings can be uncertain and workers typically lack social protection, predictable incomes and clear career progression.
The Federation of Kenya Employers reports that Kenya’s economy created about 822,100 jobs in 2025, up from 782,300 in 2024.
But the informal economy accounted for most of the opportunities, generating about 716,800 jobs compared with 105,300 in the modern or formal sector.
The figures illustrate the challenge facing graduates such as Otieno, Wanjiku and Mwangi.
Broader estimates suggest between 800,000 and one million young people enter the labour market every year, including about 50,000 university graduates and hundreds of thousands from TVET institutions and other tertiary colleges.
The result is intense competition for a relatively small number of formal vacancies.
Career development and recruitment firm BrighterMonday Kenya says many graduates lack the skills sought by employers, meaning low absorption. Only 10 per cent of the workforce is in formal employment.
Kenya National Bureau of Statistics data show the number of unemployed Kenyans increased to 2.97 million, a three per cent increase at a time of reduced hiring and repressed earnings. More than half of the unemployed are aged between 20 and 29.
The National Council for Population and Development says young people aged 18 to 34 account for about 35 per cent of Kenya’s population but have the highest unemployment rate at 67 per cent.
FKE executive director Jacqueline Mugo says the labour market faces a structural imbalance between the number of people seeking employment and the number of formal jobs being created.
“Every year, universities, TVET institutions and other training institutions release thousands of graduates into the labour market. However, the formal economy is not expanding fast enough to absorb all new entrants,” she says.
Mugo says businesses face high taxation, rising operating costs, regulatory and compliance burdens and policy uncertainty, factors that can limit expansion and hiring.
At the same time, she says, a gap between what some graduates are taught and the practical competencies employers require.
“Ultimately, Kenya needs a more conducive and predictable business environment so the private sector can grow and create sustainable jobs,” she says.
Technology has made applying for jobs easier but it has also intensified competition. A vacancy advertised online can attract applicants from across Kenya within hours, providing employers a large talent pool, while jobseekers compete against hundreds or thousands of applicants.
Mugo says employers seeking entry-level workers are not necessarily looking for years of formal experience. They may instead seek evidence of workplace exposure through internships, attachments, apprenticeships, volunteer work or other forms of practical learning.
But this creates what labour-market experts describe as an “experience paradox” — young people are asked to demonstrate experience before they have been given enough opportunities to gain it.
Stephen Maina, programme manager for youth and jobs at the Kenya Private Sector Alliance, says the employment challenge cannot simply be reduced to a job shortage.
The more fundamental question, he says, is whether Kenya is creating enough pathways for young people to move from education into productive employment.
“Employers understandably require candidates who can demonstrate practical capabilities alongside academic qualifications,” Maina says.
Businesses increasingly want workers who can communicate, solve problems, work in teams, use digital tools and adapt to changing technologies.
“But this creates an experience paradox. Young people are asked to demonstrate experience before they have been given meaningful opportunities to acquire it,” he says.
Manufacturing remains an important source of formal employment, but industry leaders acknowledge that current job creation cannot absorb the growing number of people entering the labour market.
Kenya Association of Manufacturers chief executive Tobias Alando says the sector provided 388,564 formal jobs in 2025, making manufacturing the second-largest formal employer after government.
However, the employment outlook remains mixed.
KAM’s second-quarter 2026 Manufacturing Sector Barometer Survey showed that while workforce levels were expected to remain largely stable, about 30 per cent of manufacturers planned to hire over the following six months.
Demand is expected to be strongest for skilled technical workers, followed by management, semi-skilled and temporary employees.
Alando says manufacturers increasingly need workers with technical skills in mechanical and electrical engineering, industrial mechatronics, automation, maintenance, welding and production operations.
Digital capability is also becoming important as factories adopt automation, artificial intelligence and data-driven production.
“The focus should be on ensuring that young people leave training with technical competence, digital capability and workplace readiness,” Alando says.
He calls for stronger collaboration between training institutions and industry, expanded apprenticeships and more structured workplace learning.
KAM has been promoting dual training and apprenticeship models that combine classroom instruction with hands-on experience.
Behind the employment statistics is a less visible burden: the cost of searching for a job.
For an unemployed graduate, even Sh200 or Sh500 spent travelling to an interview can be significant.
Wanjiku eventually began calculating whether she could afford to attend every interview invitation.
“You start asking yourself whether the fare is worth it,” she says. “But then you also fear missing an opportunity.”
For many jobseekers, prolonged unemployment creates a cycle in which the absence of income makes it harder to afford the activities required to find work.
“Job hunting has become a job itself,” Otieno says.
For him, the boda boda has provided a way to finance his continued search.
“If I did not have this work, I would probably have stopped applying because I would not have money for data or transport,” he says.
Maina says reducing the duration and cost of job hunting requires Kenya to rethink the transition from education to employment.
Through programmes such as Ajira Digital and NextGen.Ke, the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (Kepsa) has connected young people to digital and digitally enabled work while supporting partnerships that offer work experience.
Maina from Kepsa says internships, apprenticeships and workplace learning should become central pathways into the labour market rather than optional additions to education.
President William Ruto’s government has pledged to transform the economy and create millions of jobs, primarily targeting young people through the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (Beta).
The government also supports entrepreneurs through initiatives to ease access to finance, including the Hustler Fund, Nyota Programme and county empowerment initiatives.
For graduates like Otieno, Wanjiku and Mwangi, however, such opportunities offer a bridge rather than an answer to their original ambition.
Their degrees remain reminders of careers they trained for, while their daily work in the informal economy keeps them afloat as they continue waiting for the opportunity that could finally put their qualifications to use.
