Half of Malawi’s youth have considered leaving. Almost none have a full-time job.

Malawi has one of the stranger employment situations in Southern Africa (yes, the bar is quite low but things can always be worse). As a Zimbabwean, this dawned on me when I read that Malawian youth were queuing up to go work on farms in Israel in 2024. Yes, young people were actively signing up to go work in a country that was at war with its neighbours. 

The motives for this were two-fold. As noted in the image over half the youth considering migration in Malawi wanted to do so because there were no jobs, so Israeli farms offered them a solution in this regard.

Beyond the employment issue, the agreement with Israel also solved some issues back home with Malawi being pressed for foreign currency and Israel government willing to assist in that regard if Malawi sent some workers over. Those were the incentives but that doesn’t capture just how harsh Malawi’s labour market is deemed to be.

The share of employees with labour contracts is a lowly 13% and when you couple that with a formal sector employment share of just 14% it becomes very clear just how underdeveloped Malawi’s labour market is. These statistics imply the vast majority of the population operates entirely outside the boundaries of labor rights, workplace protections, or predictable income.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that Malawi’s minimum wage floor sits at an equivalent of just ~$30 per month, falling drastically behind neighboring Zambia (~$80) and Zimbabwe ($50-$80) and regional migration hubs like South Africa (~$160).

Lastly, agriculture accounts for 80% of total employment in Malawi. Because this work is overwhelmingly uncontracted and weather-dependent, it acts as a low-productivity safety valve rather than a modern job engine, leaving almost no pathway into a stable, upwardly mobile career ladder for Malawian youth.

When an entire generation faces a ~$30/month wage floor and a mere 3% chance of finding a full-time contract, crossing the border ceases to be viewed as a failure. As the historical reality of regional migration since the 1880s demonstrates, for Malawian youth, leaving the country is not an emotional reaction—it is the only viable economic strategy available to them.

This piece is a SADC comparison piece, in collaboration with DailyViz263 as part of the roll out of our 2026 State Of Employment Report.