CAIRO: The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), issued a report on Monday, on the occasion of the Labor Day, stating that the number of unemployed amounted to 3.183 million people in 2011, and that the unemployment rate increased to 12 percent, bringing the unemployment rate among women to 22.7 percent compared to 8.9 percent among men. The statistics agency said in a statement that, the number of employed men and women in Egypt amounted to 23.346 million, 4.627 million of whom are working women. It explained that the rate of contribution of women in the labor force is still low, reaching 22.5 percent (of the total population female in the age of 15 years and over), compared to 74.6 percent for men (of the total population, males in the age of 15 years and over), and attributed this to economic reasons related to the ability of the Egyptian labor market to absorb the supply of female labor force, in addition to the factors of expulsion from the labor market, including low wages and the involvement of marginalized women in employment, and the entry of women into the labor market at a later age compared with males, and the limited occupations and economic activities that compete for the women. The agency pointed to the high rate of unemployment among young people, to be the highest in the age group between 20 and 24 years old, where the percentage of unemployment among them to about 40 percent of the total unemployed, followed by age group between 25 and 29 years by 22.5 percent, and age group (15 – 19 years old) by 9.9 percent.
