The already high unemployment rate in Arab countries has been rising over the last few years due to political turmoil in the wake of Arab Spring revolutions and various economic shocks, the Arab Labour Organisation (ALO) said at a conference in Cairo this week. “The number of unemployed in the Arab world increased from 17 million to 20 million in recent years,” Ahmed Loqman, director-general of the ALO, told the organisation's 41st annual general meeting. At the same time, Ahmed Al-Borei, a former minister of social solidarity and manpower and a candidate for the elections for the ALO's new director-general, told the press that by 2020 the region could have up to 100 million unemployed. Non-Arab employees, often coming from Asia, should be replaced by Arab workers, he said. According to Loqman, the level of unemployment is now affecting social harmony and security and it is essential that policies are found to ease the problem. In an attempt to provide policy-makers and researchers with the statistics needed for such directions to be found, the ALO also published a report, “Employment and Unemployment in the Arab World,” which aims to help find common ground between governments, employers and workers. According to the report, the problem of unemployment in Arab states has been exacerbated in recent years by imbalances in demographic structures, inflexibility in production systems, the weakening role of the government sector in employment, and overall effect of the global financial and economic crises. Another significant factor has been that a number of Arab countries have witnessed popular protests since late 2010 and early 2011. However, despite these problems, the report said, Arab countries have an advantage in their demographic make-up. Most Arab countries have youthful populations and large and energetic labour forces. The important thing, it added, was that this labour force should acquire the skills and knowledge required to make it fit with labour market needs. The report said that the problem of unemployment in the Arab region affects mostly young people, especially those educated to university or secondary school level, and particularly women. In Egypt, nearly 70 per cent of the unemployed are aged between 15 and 29, and more than 82 per cent of them hold diplomas and university degrees, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics. Egypt's rate of unemployment was estimated at 13.4 per cent of the labour force, representing 3.6 million out of a total of 27.3 million people, in 2013. Heba Al-Lethi, head of the statistics department at Cairo University, attributed the high unemployment rate in Egypt to deterioration in most economic activities over the past three years, particularly the tourism and industrial sectors. The return of more than one million expatriate Egyptian workers from Libya will make the problem worse, she said. Al-Lethi said that the government has established an emergency employment programme in cooperation with the Social Fund for Development and financed by foreign partners, including the World Bank and the European Union. The programme includes labour-intensive local community projects in small-scale infrastructure, waste management and other areas. Last week the European Union ratified a grant of 70 million Euros to fund the programme. The programme has been running in a smaller form since 2012, but Al-Lethi said that even in its now-expanded shape it is not large enough to absorb large numbers of unemployed people. “The government should form a ministry for employment to provide training and employment programmes for new graduates,” Al-Lethi said. Moreover, the current Ministry of Manpower and Immigration is more interested in defending labour rights than in providing jobs, she said, adding, “The government should offer incentives to the private sector to encourage the establishment and expansion of labour-intensive factories since these provide sustainable jobs and increase production.” The fewer the jobs available in Arab countries, the more scientists and physicians emigrate to Western countries, the ALO report said. About 50 per cent of top Arab physicians, 23 per cent of engineers, and 15 per cent of scientists emigrate every year to the US or Canada. As a result, the Arab world contributes some 31 per cent of the brain drain from developing countries. Egypt is considered the biggest loser as many of its most highly trained and competent workers leave. In developing countries in general, including Arab states, governments often strive to follow policies that reduce unemployment by creating job opportunities in the public sector. According to the report, the number of employees in this sector is now more than 50 per cent of the workforce in countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and Syria. This pattern of employment draws young people because of the benefits it offers, including fixed salaries, holiday benefits, and social coverage, among others. Since employment opportunities created by the private sector continue to be relatively few in number in these countries, employment relations remain weak and have not allowed the development of labour norms. A final type of employment in Arab countries is self-employment or the informal sector. The economies of the Arab countries have seen a large increase in self-employment in recent years, with consumers benefitting from reduced prices. Many workers laid off by the formal sector, or those in need of additional incomes, have been joined the informal sector, the report said.
