742,800 'new' jobs? huh!

Who'se taking that load of bullcrap that the Kenyan economy generated 750K new jobs in 2013? ‪This Jubilee government thinks it can fool everyone. Planning and Devolution Cabinet Secretary now wants Kenyans to believe that some 742,800 'new' jobs were created in 2013, alone. My question is, which economy is it that Ms Waiguru is talking about? Which Kenya? Where are these jobs? 

Even if we believed those dodgy figures:

According to statistics released yesterday, from the Economic Survey 2014, in 2013, Kenya purportedly generated some 742,800 'new' jobs. The same survey indicates that Agriculture and Tourism two of the main sectors that contribute the largest proportion of GDP, and contribute the largest share of employment reported a decline in growth. Agriculture sector grew by a marginal 2.9% compared to 4.2% in 2012. Tourism numbers continued to dip in 2013 (1.5 million arrivals compared to 1.8 million in 2011). Growth is thus attributed largely to the private sector in areas of manufacturing (grew by 8.9%), retail, wholesale and construction.

So if we take it that manufacturing was the largest driver of growth of jobs, meaning the other sectors contributed less we should see manufacturing contributing the largest chunk of the new 742 thousand jobs. However in the same survey, manufacturing jobs only expanded from 271,000 in 2013 to 280,300 thousand in 2013. That’s a marginal difference of only about 9,000 jobs. 

Yet overall new jobs jumped from 665,800 in 2012 to 742,800 in 2013 (difference of 77,000). So here begs the question: 

“If manufacturing, contributing the largest share of new jobs, also registering the greatest growth (8.9%) only contributed 9,000 new jobs (above 2012 new ones), where else did we source the other 68,000 that account for the 77,000 difference between growth in 2012 and 2013? The other dwarfing sectors that registered dismal growth or decline like agriculture may be? 

If anything with the Kenyan economic circumstances 5% growth can produce no more than 30K new formal sector jobs. So even if we had such an awesome informal sector with super job creating ability it could not have created 200 times what the 4.7% growth would have realistically produced in 2013 in the formal sector.

Just wondering what voodoonomics happened between 2012 and 2014 that could change things so dramaticaly. See the graphs below, even when the economy grew exponentially from 2.7% in 2009 to 5.8% in 2010 the rate of growth of new jobs in the formal sector was never as sharp as we are being made to believe it happened in 2013. New jobs grew from 53,400 in 2009 to 57,200 in 2010 compared to Jubilee's 78,700 to 109,900 with just 0.7% (4.6% to 4.7%) difference in economic growth. The math just doesnt add up. There has to be a correlation between economic growth and jobs creation.

Problem is, in this day and age, not even the powerpoint that Ms Waiguru used to release the Economic Survey 2014 yesterday is available online on KNBS website or Planning and Devolution Ministry. We are relying on snippets from media reports that do not provide the real picture. I desperately hope that for want of evidence to demonstrate progress attributable to the Jubilee government people arent cooking growth figures and hoping to conceal it from the public. 

Let them release the full report, plus the data used to arrive at those conclusions so Kenyans can judge the credibility of those growth figures accordingly.