CAIRO: The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) revealed that not all is well in Egypt's workforce. According to statistics made public this week, the unemployment rate rose to 9.36 percent in the third quarter of 2009 compared to 8.55 percent during the same period last year. The overall unemployment rate among men is at 5.3 percent and for women it is a staggering 22.8 percent, while the proportion of unemployed who have worked before doubled to 14.9 percent of the total workforce, a rise of 7.6 percent. The unemployment rate in urban areas also rose by 2.4 percent as it reached 13.7 percent, compared to 11.3 percent last year, while the unemployment rate in rural areas rose only 0.4 percent in the quarter to come in at 6.1 percent in total, compared to 6.5 percent last year. A slight decrease, but according to the report this is likely due to the number of people who have left rural areas for the cities. The results of the research of the Agency revealed that the unemployment rate rose to its highest level in the urban governorates, reaching 14.2 percent, while the lowest level recorded in the villages in the border provinces, only around 1.2 percent. This was followed by the villages of Upper Egypt where unemployment is at a low 5.8 percent. The study also recorded the high number of unemployed to be some 2.4 million compared with last year's number of 2.1 million, an increase of roughly 300,000 unemployed individuals. The proportion of unemployed young people between 15- and 29-years-old is 85.4 percent of the total unemployed, while the total number of unemployed people aged between 20 and 24 years reached 1.1 million and accounts for nearly half those without work at 46.9 percent. Researcher Abdel Moneim Hamid, who has worked on a number of similar reports in the past, says that the young people without work should be of major concern for observers and the government. “If they are out of work, what are they doing? This could lead to social problems that have not existed in Egypt before. We need to find them jobs and they need to be able to maintain their positions for longer periods of time,” Hamid said. While the number of unemployed who hold higher levels of education passed the one million mark at 1.3 million an increase of 3.55 percent. University graduates unemployed was reported at 861,000 or 36.5 percent of the total unemployed in Egypt. CAPMAS said on Sunday that the overall Egyptian labor force reached 25.2 million during the third quarter of 2009, an increase of 397,000 form last year. It said that while the women are unemployed more than men, female participation in the work force has increased 23 percent from the previous year. **reporting by Mohamed Abdel Salam BM
