Egypt's unemployment rate decreased to 8.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2018, down from 10 per cent in the previous quarter and 11.3 per cent a year earlier, said a recent report from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS). The total labour force stands at 28.027 million, the report says, adding that the unemployment rate among young people in the 15 to 29 age group is now the highest. This group represents 78.7 per cent of the total number of unemployed persons, with 38.2 per cent of people aged between 20 and 24, and 29 per cent of those between 25 and 29 also being unemployed. Planning Minister Hala Al-Said said that Egypt aims to provide about 750,000 job opportunities in 2018/2019 and 870,000 in 2021/2022. The government had previously announced that the unemployment rate was anticipated to be around 7.1 per cent in June 2022. The Egypt 2030 Vision plans to reduce unemployment to four per cent of the working population. The mega-projects currently being developed by the government within the framework of the 2030 Vision have provided a large number of job opportunities that have helped to absorb thousands of jobless and reduced the overall unemployment rate, said Mohamed Abdel-Wahed, a former manager of United Experts, a human resources company. He added that the improvement was a sign that the government's economic reform programme was succeeding in dealing with one of the economy's most persistent problems. The economic pressures and inflation of the last few years had changed many people's mindsets, Abdel-Wahed said, meaning that they no longer waited to be offered public-sector jobs state and were more willing to work in the private sector, expanding the market for employment. He said that the unemployment rate would likely fall in the coming years, given plans to develop more projects in the new cities in different governorates. However, Alia Al-Mahdi, a professor of economics at Cairo University, said that further declines in the unemployment rate may be unlikely. “To reduce the unemployment rate from 10 per cent to 8.9 per cent means that the government would have to provide more than one million job opportunities a year, which is impossible,” Al-Mahdi said. She explained that according to official figures the country's growth rate was 5.5 per cent, which meant the economy would be able to create a maximum of 550,000 job opportunities per year. Any further reduction would be impossible, she said, since the number of the unemployed increase every year by 900,000 new graduates who then start looking for job opportunities. Added to these were a number of discouraged individuals who look for jobs for a year or two and then get frustrated. Abdel-Wahed said that one of the reasons for the decline in the jobless rate was that some ministries such as the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Manpower had provided thousands of job opportunities for young people through a contracts system last year. But Al-Mahdi said the total number of these jobs was tiny compared to the unemployment rate. “I don't know how it is measured, but I think the total labour force figure is inaccurate,” she commented. Unemployment in Egypt averaged around 10.87 per cent from 1993 until 2018, reaching the highest point of 13.4 per cent in the third quarter of 2013 and a record low of 8.1 per cent in the second quarter of 1999. In 2017, Egypt's unemployment rate slipped to 11.8 per cent, compared to 12.5 per cent in 2016. The unemployment rate is updated quarterly and measures the number of people actively looking for a job as a percentage of Egypt's total labour force. The CAPMAS report added that the unemployment rate in urban areas was 10.9 per cent compared to 7.5 per cent in the countryside. During the fourth quarter of 2018, the unemployment rate among men had decreased to 6.4 per cent of the total labour force, while the rate for women was 19.6 per cent, it said.
