CAIRO: Egypt's official unemployment rate continues to rise. According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), the country's current unemployment rate stands at 12.4 percent through the end of the final quarter of 2011, a rise from 11.9 percent in the previous report. It said in the report published on Saturday that the number of unemployed in Egypt reached 3.163 million, an increase of 55,000, or 1.8 percent compared to the previous quarter, and an increase of 825,000, or 35.3 percent during the same quarter of the previous year. The report of the results of research on manpower for the final quarter (October-December) of 2011 issued by the agency explained that “the percentage of unemployed graduates from the middle- and upper-classes and university graduates and Master's holders, amounted to about 82.6 percent of the total unemployed, reaching 50 percent among those less qualified (53.8 percent males, 46.2 percent females), and 32.6 percent among holders of university degrees and post-graduate degrees (43.8 percent male, 56.2 percent female).” It said that the unemployment rate in urban areas stood at 16.1 percent, while it reached 8.6 percent in the countryside, pointing out that the percentage of unemployed youth in the age group between 15 and 29 years, amounted to about 76.6 percent of the total unemployed, but the figure drops to 10.8 percent in the age group between 15 and 19, while the percentage has reached 43.1 percent in the age group between 20 and 24. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/8zXN5 Tags: CAPMAS, featured, Statistics, Unemployment Section: Business, Egypt, Latest News
