CAIRO: Cairo: The Egyptian Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) reported an increase in the number of unemployed Egyptians during the first three months of 2010, to just over two million people, an increase of 12,000. While the rate of increase in the number of the unemployed compared to the same quarter of previous year reached 1.7 percent, the Agency also said in its statement, published with the results of their research that the proportion of unemployed graduates with intermediate and university level and above was 91.9 percent of the total unemployed in the country, where the number of unemployed “qualified people over the medium and medium level – 1.34 million are 56 percent of the total unemployed, while the number of unemployed holding university qualifications and above reached 857,000 unemployed increased by 35.9 percent of the total unemployed.” At the same time, the research noted the focus of unemployment in the age groups of youth, which range from 15- to 29-years-old, “where the percentage of unemployed young people aged between 15 and 29 amounted to about 75.9 percent of the total unemployed, as the number of unemployed between 15- and 19-years-old was 300,000 unemployed people; increased by 12.6 percent of the total unemployed, while the number aged between 20 and 24 [were at] 977,000, 40.9 percent of the total unemployed. At the same time the percentage of unemployed who have worked before increased to 25.7 percent of the total unemployed, compared to 12.6 percent in the previous quarter, according CAPMAS. The rate of unemployment in urban areas reached 12.5 percent, while the rate in rural areas was reported at 6.5 percent. The results of research on manpower for the first quarter of the 2010 estimated the entire labor force at 26.19 million, an increase of 24,000 per capita by 3.7 percent compared to the previous quarter. The participation of men in the labor force was recorded at 74.5 percent during the first quarter of this year, rising by two percent, while women's participation in the labor force of 23.7 percent was a small an increase of 0.7 percent over last year, while the rate of economic dependency – number of persons outside the labor force per 100 people in the labor force – was characterized “as stable at about two individuals for each individual within the work force.” In a related development, the research suggested the high number of workers during the first three months of this year to reach 23.8 million, an increase of 912,000 workers compared to the same quarter last year. BM
