Unemployment affects everyone in Egypt, but women more so than men, as shown by comparing figures between 2007 and 2017. The unemployment rate among men went from 5.9% to 8.2%. Meanwhile, unemployed women were at 18.6% and went up to 23.1% in 2017. There is an evident linear correlation between the two genders, whenever men’s lack of jobs increases, the number of unemployed women also soars.
A statement by Egypt’s national statistics agency Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) concerning the last quarter of 2018 showed that more people are employed in rural areas than urban cities where over 16 million people are employed provincial cities and almost 12.2 million in the cities. The report also highlighted that “as far as economic activities are concerned the agricultural and fishing sectors got the highest rate of workers.”
Currently, CAPMAS estimates that the Egyptian population is over 98 million inhabitants. By 2028, the working age population in Egypt will have increased by 20% to a labor force of 80 million Egyptians who will all be needing jobs, said a statement by the International Monetary Fund.
Egypt needs to create 700,000-1 million jobs every year to meet the demands of a growing employment base. To generate this huge number of jobs, Egypt needs to raise the economic growth rate, reduce inflation and attract more investment.
Nevertheless, there is indeed a light at the end of the tunnel. A recent report by Harvard recorded that Egypt was the 3rd fasted developing economy in the coming decade. Egypt’s Strategy for Sustainable Development, or Vision 2030, aims to reduce the current unemployment percentage to 4% in the foreseeable future.
