Job description

The Position:

Individual Consultant on 2025 Census Thematic Report Migration and Urbanization Report, P4,

 

You will report to the UNFPA Policy and Census Coordinator, and in consultation with the UNFPA’s P&D Team and Regional Specialists on Migration, Population and Development and the LSB. 

 

How you can make a difference:

UNFPA is the lead United Nations agency for delivering a world where every pregnancy is intended, every childbirth is safe, and every young person's potential is fulfilled. The UNFPA Strategic Plan for 2026-2029 articulates the organization’s response to a complex global environment, providing a roadmap for resilience and renewal. It is designed to accelerate the implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. This mandate is pursued through a focus on four interconnected outcomes: ending the unmet need for family planning; ending preventable maternal deaths; ending gender-based violence and harmful practices; and adapting to demographic change through evidence and rights-based policies.

In a world where fundamental human rights are at risk, we need principled and ethical staff who embody these international norms and standards and will defend them courageously and with full conviction.

UNFPA is seeking candidates who transform, inspire, and deliver high-impact sustained results, ensuring effective external relations, communications, partnership-building and resource mobilization in a rapidly changing development and funding landscape. We need staff who are transparent, exceptional in how they manage the resources entrusted to them, and who commit to delivering excellence in programme results



 Job Purpose:

The UNFPA Country Office in Lao PDR is seeking an international consultant to provide advanced technical assistance and demographic expertise to the Lao Statistics Bureau (LSB) for the computation, validation, structural modelling, and narrative write-up of the official Population and Housing Census Thematic Report on Migration and Urbanization. The consultant will also be responsible to produce a high-impact Policy Brief and a package of geospatial analytical products including migration flow maps.

This work will be coordinated and overseen by the UNFPA Policy and Census Coordinator. Consultation will occur with UNFPA and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) Technical Advisers as needed. The consultancy will adhere to UNFPA’s policies and procedures, in collaboration with national counterparts where required.

 

You would be responsible for:

The Lao People’s Democratic Republic has successfully concluded the nationwide field data collection for its 2025 Population and Housing Census (PHC), marking a historic transition as the country’s first-ever digital census. As the operation enters its critical post-enumeration analytical phase, turning this unprecedented digital dataset into strategic, socio-demographic intelligence is paramount.



Lao PDR stands at an essential development crossroads, shaped by its upcoming graduation from Least Developed Country (LDC) status and a time-limited demographic window of opportunity- a period characterized by a growing share of young, working-age populations relative to dependents, offering a powerful engine for accelerated economic growth. However, this potential demographic dividend is currently facing a severe disruption: a massive and accelerating wave of out-migration, particularly among the youth. Driven by the pursuit of better employment, higher income, and education, young men and women are increasingly leaving the country, often for better-paid jobs abroad.



This is generating acute labor force deficits domestically and exacerbating a mismatch between the supply and demand sides of the national labor market. To realize the demographic dividend, the government must rapidly formulate evidence-based policies to retain its young population, incentivize private sector engagement in youth training, and manage spatial distribution. Addressing these challenges requires a rigorous investigation of internal and international migration dynamics, urbanization patterns, and a robust triangulation of the new census data with existing administrative records (e.g., the national Migration Management Framework).

Given this imperative, LSB requires the technical support of a senior demographer/migration expert to apply rigorous spatial and demographic techniques, exploit the new census module on "former household members," author the definitive national monograph on Migration and Urbanization, and build analytical capacities within LSB’s technical teams.

 

Scope of work

The International Consultant will be directly embedded within the LSB analytical structure via an Expert Pairing Modality, working 1-to-1 with an LSB counterpart and mentoring a dedicated cohort of 2-3 junior LSB experts to maximize institutional knowledge transfer.

The scope of analysis is bound by the information captured in the 2025 PHC questionnaires (specifically utilizing the information on Place of Birth, Previous Residence, Duration of Residence, and the new module capturing Former Members of the Household). The consultant will take full technical responsibility for guiding the validation, syntax preparation, analysis, indicator construction, and final write-up of the report.

Key Indicators and Analytical Dimensions to be Modelled:

  1. Internal Migration Dynamics:
  2. Measurement of Lifetime and Recent (past 5 years) Migration across provincial and district boundaries.
  3. Calculation of In-migration, Out-migration, and Net Migration rates for all 18 provinces to identify major "sending" and "receiving" regions. Look into smaller pockets (transitional migration pocket) of high in- and out-migration within the country. 
  4. Analysis of migration streams: Rural-to-Urban, Urban-to-Urban, Rural-to-Rural, and Urban-to-Rural.
  5. Urbanization Patterns and Tempo:
  6. Measurement of the urban population size, urbanization rate, and the tempo of urban growth comparing 2015 and 2025 data (and earlier if available).
  7. Analysis of urban primacy (the dominance of Vientiane Capital) and the spatial distribution of the population across secondary cities and towns.
  8. International Out-Migration (Emigration) and Labor Drain:
  9. Utilization of the "Former Members of Household" module to estimate the volume, demographic profile (age, sex), and destination countries of emigrants (if possible using external sources, e.g. censuses of receiving countries, IOM data, EuroStat). 
  10. Analysis of the drivers of emigration (e.g., employment, education) and measurement of the domestic labor force deficit caused by youth out-migration.
  11. Characteristics of Migrants vs. Non-Migrants:
  12. Socio-economic and demographic profiling of migrants (i.e sex, age, nationality) cross-tabulating migrant status against variables such as labor force participation, occupation, literacy, and household wealth quintiles.
  13. Administrative Data Triangulation:
  14. Systematic comparison and reconciliation of the census-derived international migration estimates with existing administrative data from the national Migration Management Framework.
  15. Geospatial and GIS Mapping Integration:
  16. Integrating localized indicators with LSB’s GIS infrastructure to produce high-resolution maps and origin-destination flow maps (chord diagrams/desire lines) visualizing internal migration corridors and urbanization sprawl for the Census Geospatial Data dashboard. 
  17. Comparison with other international data sources: e.g. censuses from receiving countries, IOM data, Eurostat. 

The consultant will execute the assignment across the following mandatory operational steps:

  • Task 1: Inception and Methodological Design: Review the census questionnaires, the "former household members" module, the questions on the migration history of respondents,  and previous surveys. Produce a detailed Inception Report establishing the spatial framework, migration matrices, and demographic equations required.
  • Task 2: Structural Outline and Dummy Tables: Draft the comprehensive structural skeleton of the monograph along with empty "dummy tables" and graphic shells. This includes planning for population pyramids of migrants vs. non-migrants, chord diagrams for migration streams, and standardized data visualization templates.
  • Task 3: Syntax Development and On-the-Job Mentorship: Develop all syntaxes. Train and guide LSB staff in writing clean, reproducible statistical scripts (SPSS and/or R syntaxes) to analyze micro-datasets, construct migration matrices, and extract data to fill the agreed dummy tables.
  • Task 4: Data Validation and Triangulation: Lead the technical validation of LSB-generated outputs. Critically, this task includes triangulating the census emigration data with external administrative datasets (Migration Management Framework) to assess coverage, reconcile discrepancies, and smooth out spatial reporting errors.
  • Task 5: Monograph Synthesis and Narrative Drafting: Write the definitive text of the monograph, synthesizing findings, detailing the socio-economic impacts of youth out-migration, and translating these correlations into evidence-based policy recommendations for labor and urban planning.
  • Task 6: Policy Brief Production: Author a highly concise, visually appealing 2-to-3 page national Policy Brief that distills complex migration flows and labor force deficits into immediate, actionable policy levers for senior planners, the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, and private sector stakeholders.

Expected Outputs/Deliverables:

The successful completion of this consultancy will yield the following key outputs:

  • Output 1: An approved Inception Report detailing the methodological framework and administrative data triangulation strategy.
  • Output 2: A complete set of populated dummy tables (migration matrices) and the fully reproducible, clean SPSS/R syntax files used to generate them.
  • Output 3: A comprehensive, publication-ready Migration and Urbanization Thematic Monograph.
  • Output 4: A 2-to-3 page high-impact Policy Brief with actionable policy recommendations targeting youth retention and labor market alignment.
  • Output 5: A final package of geospatial products (ready-to-publish thematic flow maps and shapefiles) for integration into the Census Geospatial Data Dashboard.
At Impactpool we do our best to provide you the most accurate info, but closing dates may be wrong on our site. Please check on the recruiting organization's page for the exact info. Candidates are responsible for complying with deadlines and are encouraged to submit applications well ahead.
Before applying, please make sure that you have read the requirements for the position and that you qualify. Applications from non-qualifying applicants will most likely be discarded by the recruiting manager.