CAIRO: Egyptian youth are mostly pessimistic about employment opportunities in Egypt, according to a recent survey by The Gallup Poll. Although young Egyptians believe that they can help their country make progress in the next decade, they cite a lack of effort towards job creation, the necessity of having connections (wasta) to work, and bureaucratic interference as the main obstacles to obtaining employment. The primary obstacle is job creation. Twenty-eight percent of youth - defined as men and women between the ages of 15 and 29 - expressed satisfaction with efforts to increase the number of quality jobs in Egypt. Only 17 percent of young Egyptians believe that now is a good time to find a job in their community, and 37 percent said that their community was a good place to start a business. Egyptian youth were also pessimistic about the role of nepotism in hiring practices. Of those polled, 69 percent agreed that knowing someone important was essential to getting hired. The poll data also showed that unemployment is a serious issue for young Egyptians. Of those polled, 37 percent were either fully or partially employed, and another 30 percent were students. However, 33 percent were neither employed nor in school. Despite their negative opinion of job opportunities in Egypt, respondents were optimistic about the role of entrepreneurship in job creation, with 65 percent agreeing that entrepreneurs help create jobs. However, they said that a major impediment confronting Egyptian entrepreneurs is government bureaucracy. Only 30 percent of Egyptian youth said that the government makes paperwork and permits accessible and easy for new business owners. But pessimism regarding the bureaucracy did not translate into a general distrust in the government. Assuming similar work and pay conditions, 53 percent of Egyptian youth said they would prefer to work for the government, compared with 10 percent who prefer working for a private company. Only Qatar and the UAE had fewer respondents interested in private business. Most Egyptian youth were confident that the government would not interfere in their work. Nearly three-quarters said they believed that assets and property were safe when starting a new business, in contrast with more skeptical outlooks in the Palestinian territories and in Algeria, where less than 40 percent were likely to express such confidence. Indeed, a willingness to take advantage of possible government-provided opportunities was prevalent among Egyptian youth. Job training programs received overwhelming support and youth expressed confidence in their results, though many said it was either unavailable near their homes or too expensive. The poll, "The Silatech Index: Voices of Young Arabs is a partnership between The Gallup Organization and Silatech, a non-profit social enterprise focusing on youth employment in the Arab world. Between February and April 2009, the study interviewed 8,597 national youth across 19 countries in the region with one of the youngest populations in the world. Youth form nearly 30 percent of the Arab population. In Egypt, 375 took the survey, which has a 5.8 margin of error for that country. "The time has never been better to invest in young people living in the Arab world; that is the essential message of this report, wrote Silatech Chief Executive Officer Rick Little in a letter prefacing the study.
