AI splits Bangladesh’s workforce as HR faces job-security fears
- AI tools can screen thousands of applications for one Dhaka vacancy in minutes.
- Automation cut employment in some garment segments by nearly one-third.
- The BLF and BRAC University study surveyed workers in Dhaka, Gazipur and Narayanganj.
- Aninda Ghosh is senior assistant manager of HR at ULAB.
DHAKA, BANGLADESH — Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can now sift several thousand applications for a single entry-level vacancy in Dhaka within minutes, but the same shift is feeding job-security anxiety among Bangladeshi workers and pushing human resources (HR) departments to rethink a role built largely on administrative processing.
AI splits Bangladesh’s workforce in two
Aninda Ghosh, senior assistant manager of human resources at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), laid out the case in an op-ed for the Dhaka Tribune, arguing that HR must become “the deliberate architect of human potential in an AI-driven economy.”
Ghosh cited a study by the Bangladesh Labour Foundation (BLF) and BRAC University researchers that found automation had contracted employment in specific ready-made garment (RMG) segments by nearly one-third.
Those displaced were disproportionately helpers, older workers and women with limited formal education, Ghosh wrote.
“In labour-intensive manufacturing, automation does not merely absorb tedious sub-tasks; it threatens to eliminate entire categories of entry-level employment,” Ghosh wrote.
Knowledge work treats AI as augmentation
“Bangladesh’s AI narrative is not monolithic; it is a tale of two distinct workforces, contingent entirely upon a worker’s position within the economic hierarchy,” Ghosh wrote.
In knowledge-intensive settings such as tech startups Pathao and Chaldal and mobile financial services provider bKash, Ghosh argued, AI automates repetitive tasks rather than whole professions.
The op-ed also warned that AI screening tools trained on historical corporate data risk encoding past biases, such as favoring resumes from elite urban universities or affluent postal codes.
Ghosh urged HR leaders to build internal pathways for current employees to gain AI skills rather than replacing them with technology-native recruits.
That two-workforce split matters for offshore outsourcing, because the op-ed places business process outsourcing (BPO) firms among the Bangladeshi employers already adopting AI in recruitment and workforce management. When AI augments rather than replaces those roles, providers that reskill their own staff stand apart, a distinction buyers comparing the top BPO companies worldwide can test directly.
Ghosh’s analysis argues that AI’s effect on Bangladeshi jobs depends on where a worker sits, with factory roles facing replacement and office roles facing redesign.
For enterprise buyers with teams in Bangladesh, the question is whether a provider treats AI as a way to cut staff or to raise the value of the staff it keeps.
Offshore BPO operations that invest in reskilling and audit their AI hiring tools for bias are positioned to keep both talent and client trust.
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Disclosure: Outsource Accelerator uses AI tools in the backend of its editorial workflow. Every article is reviewed and verified by a human editor before publication.
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