Rwanda’s unemployment rate drops to 11.7% in Q4 2025
The National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) released a new study showing that the total unemployment rate decreased three percentage points from 14.7% in the same period of 2024 to 11.7% in the fourth quarter of 2025.
For every nine people in the labor force, this corresponds to about one unemployed person.
Even if underemployment and labor underutilization are still high, the rate is still lower than the pre-Covid-19 level of 15.4% recorded in November 2019, indicating a slow recovery from pandemic-era shocks, according to the research.
The Covid-19 pandemic caused significant disruptions to the local and worldwide labor markets and economy, which led to a rapid increase in unemployment, which peaked at 24.3% in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to NISR.
Youth unemployment decreased by almost four percentage points to 14.1% in Q4 2025 from 18.1% in the same period in 2024, according to the most recent report.
An overview of the labor force
8.6 million people were anticipated to be of working age (16 years and older) during the same time period. Of this total, 646,000 were unemployed, 2.9 million were employed, and 3.1 million were not in the labor force.
Subsistence farmers, full-time students, the elderly, people with disabilities that prevent them from working, and discouraged job searchers are examples of those who are neither employed nor actively looking for work.
There were 5.5 million people in the labor force, which included both employed and unemployed people. The labor force participation rate was 64.1%, which was essentially constant from 64% in November 2024.
The percentage of the population that is not employed also stayed constant at 35.9%, down from 36% the previous year.
The rate of unemployment among women is very high.
Women continued to have greater unemployment rates (13 percent) than men (10.5 percent), and young people continued to experience higher unemployment rates (14.1 percent) than adults (10 percent), according to the report.
Urban unemployment was 11%, but rural unemployment was 12%, which was little higher.
In Q5 2025, the gender disparity in unemployment decreased by 2.8 percentage points from the same quarter the year before, to 2.5 percentage points.
Throughout the year, employment circumstances improved, as evidenced by the employment-to-population ratio (EPR), which increased from 54.6% in the same quarter of 2024 to 56.7% in November 2025.
Women’s gains, whose EPR increased by 3.3 percentage points, were the main driver of the increase, while men’s rate was constant.
Men continued to have greater employment rates (63.7%) than women (50.4%), notwithstanding the improvement.
Because of this, the gender gap in employment decreased by 2.7 percentage points from the previous year to 13.3 percentage points in November 2025.
With an EPR of 60%, employment was similarly greater among adults 31 years of age and older than among youths 16 to 30 years of age (52.2%).
The fact that over 60% of employed people worked in non-agricultural fields shows that agriculture is still moving away from the field.
Underutilization of labor is more prevalent among women.
Despite the advancements, problems with the labor market still exist. In November 2025, the labor underutilization rate, which includes unemployment, time-related underemployment, and potential labor force participation, was 56.5% overall.
Females were more likely than males to be underutilized (63.4%), and teenagers were slightly more likely to be underutilized (57.1%) than adults (56.1%).
Beyond headline unemployment statistics, the rate rose by 1.5 percentage points from 2024 Q4, indicating continued pressure in the labor market.
