This is the first in a series of articles on the labour market in Mozambique created by the emprego.co.mz team with the aim of supporting recruitment processes and strategies in the country.
Recruitment is an activity that can cause financial damage to companies and to the economy, since a wrong hire can cost between 30% and 50% of the annual salary for the position, according to various international studies, as well as damage to reputation and productivity that is harder to quantify. In Mozambique, many recruiters still do not have transparent and secure processes, thus contributing to the prevalence of nepotism, favouritism and corruption, which has been growing in the labour market and negatively affecting values such as competence, merit and honesty.
emprego.co.mz presents here data generated by the companies and organisations that recruit transparently and securely through the platform, corresponding to about 10% of all job vacancies in the formal sector from 2012 to 2024, in a sample of N=21590.
According to these data, more than half of all formal job opportunities in Mozambique are in the city of Maputo (53%), followed by Cabo Delgado (8%), with the remaining provinces accounting for between 2% and 5%. Vacancies that require travel to various locations make up about 9% of the total, and only 0.1% of vacancies are for Mozambican candidates to go and work in other countries.
This appears to indicate that the formal labour market is concentrated mostly in the capital (Maputo City) and, occasionally, in the provinces where the major extractive projects operate (Cabo Delgado and Tete) and in the large ports (Sofala and Nampula). In the provinces of Gaza, Inhambane, Manica and Niassa, very little formal employment is available in the labour market. It may also point to a potential lack of investment by multinationals operating in Mozambique in creating career opportunities for Mozambican professionals to be based abroad (as we have seen, currently only 0.1% of vacancies).
When we analyse job availability in the provincial capitals (urban) and in the districts (rural), we see an average of 61% of all vacancies concentrated in urban areas, with examples of more than 90% in Tete and Nampula, and exceptions to this trend in Gaza and Niassa, where there are proportionally more job opportunities in rural areas. The concentration of employment in urban areas is a worldwide trend to which Mozambique is no exception; however, the high concentration of formal employment in the capital Maputo, as well as in the provincial capitals, shows the work that needs to be done in creating and publicising formal jobs that can attract young Mozambican professionals to career and development opportunities in rural areas.
To conclude, we reiterate that these data cover only formal job vacancies advertised by recruiters who use transparent processes on emprego.co.mz, and therefore represent only a sample of the vacancies available in Mozambique.
