At Queer WorX, we speak as and write as advocates, not statisticians. We respect the work behind national reports such as the Labour Force Survey and the Bureau of Statistics’ expertise. But from where we stand, alongside young LGBTIQ+ people looking for work, entrepreneurs shut out of opportunity as workers navigating discrimination, certain silences in the data are impossible to ignore. The 2024 LFS paints a sobering picture of Lesotho’s labour market. It also exposes a deeper flaw in our national data system: the absence of inclusive gender representation.
Erasure, not oversight
The LFS disaggregates data across sex, age, marital status and education, breaking down employment, earnings and unemployment in detail. Yet across 172 pages, it frames Basotho exclusively in binary terms: male or female. This is not merely a technical oversight. It is erasure. By rendering gender and sexual minorities invisible, the report obscures how sexual and gender identity compounds socioeconomic marginalisation and perpetuates real economic harm against LGBTIQ+ Basotho.
This statistical erasure contradicts Lesotho’s commitment to the SDGs, particularly the pledge to ‘leave no one behind’. How do we reconcile that promise with the exclusion of citizens whose realities fall outside the male/female binary? The report never acknowledges the existence, let alone the economic experiences of transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming or intersex Basotho.
The question the survey never asked
Lesotho’s working-age population is reported at over 1.5 million. How many of them are LGBTIQ+? How many are trapped in informal, underpaid work because of systemic discrimination? How many are unemployed not for lack of skills or education, but because their identities are unwelcome in the workplace?
The Labour Force Survey cannot answer these questions. It never asked them.
The report puts the active youth labour force at 373,313. Gender diverse youth are part of that number in real life, but invisible in the statistics and, by extension, in the policies and programmes built on them. If Lesotho is serious about youth unemployment and entrepreneurship, it must count all young people. The Bureau of Statistics commits to producing data that is accurate, reliable and culturally relevant for evidence-based planning. That commitment falls short when it comes to the LGBTIQ+ community and persons.
A political choice, not a statistical one
Data defines who is seen, and ultimately who is served.
What makes the silence striking is that the state can collect disaggregated data when it chooses. In the health sector, particularly around HIV, data exists of men who have sex with other men, and other so-called key populations. But those labels are framed through a pathologising, risk-focused lens that reduces LGBTIQ+ people to sexual behaviour rather than recognising them as full human beings.
This fragmented recognition sustains a convenient fiction: that LGBTIQ+ Basotho exist as disease vectors for public health bulletins, never as workers, entrepreneurs, creatives, professionals or innovators. How efficient! We work (assuming we are graciously allowed employment). We pay taxes (provided, of course, we miraculously possess the means despite systemic barriers). We even dare create jobs (if the hallowed ‘equal opportunities’ ever materialise beyond press releases). We build families (if the law, in its infitite wisdom, deigns to recognise our relationships, ha!). We contribute, persistently and undeniably, even as the law and official data offer us the courtesy of invisibility.
Blueprints for exclusion
Lesotho’s policy frameworks perform a cruel trick: pledging inclusion while erasing LGBTIQ+ realities. The NSDP II trumpets inclusive growth but ignores how SOGIESC-specific vulnerabilities, including the fear of reporting violence documented by the ICJ, fuel unemployment. The NSDS II demands disaggregated data as a pillar of leaving no one behind, then exempts SOGIESC entirely, trapping gender in a binary. The NFIS envisions a financial sector serving all Basotho, and champions digital IDs and e-KYC, while remaining blind to how biometric systems alienate gender non-conforming and transgender citizens.
These are not merely incomplete documents; they are blueprints of exclusion, masquerading as policy.
Count us
Lesotho’s economy cannot thrive while segments of its population remain invisible in official data. We need national surveys that respect and acknowledge gender diversity in line with international best practice, with gender identity questions and options beyond binary markers.
Visibility is not only a matter of dignity. It is smart economics. Inclusion in national data is inclusion in national development.
Measurable indicators within the NSDP and SDG reporting must explicitly track gender diversity in economic participation and labour force data. Until then, leaving no one behind remains folklore, a story repeated in policy documents but never realised in the lives of LGBTIQ+ Basotho. Counting every Mosotho, in all their diversity and background, is where inclusion begins.
This Opinion piece was first published by NewsDay Lesotho. Read the original here.
