No abstract

The Middle East and North Africa region struggled to meet the employment aspirations of its increasingly educated youth in the aftermath of structural reforms. This article examines the evolution of initial labor market outcomes across pre- and post-reform cohorts of school leavers by education and socioeconomic status (SES) in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia. Results show that formal jobs for educated new entrants are increasingly allocated according to SES, as measured by parents’ education and father’s occupation, in Egypt and Tunisia, but not in Jordan. In Egypt and Tunisia, the quality of initial jobs deteriorated for educated new entrants, particularly among those with lower SES. This rising tide of inequality of opportunity in employment may have contributed to the Arab Spring uprisings and remains an important source of frustration for youth and their families.

In terms of overall growth rates, by 2018 the Egyptian economy had rebounded from the slowdown it experienced as a result of the global financial crisis, the 2011 revolution and the revolution’s aftermath. In this chapter we explore whether the recovery in growth rates was accompanied by an improvement in the quantity, and especially the quality, of employment in Egypt. We examine how overall employment and job creation evolved and then delve into the composition of employment in terms of sector, formality, industry, location in and out of establishments and establishment size. We also examine aspects of job quality including skill requirements, regularity, paid leaves, health insurance, hours of work, and exposure to workplace hazards. We investigate workers’ satisfaction with various aspects of their jobs and how it changed over time and trace the evolution of underemployment in terms of involuntary part-time work and educational over-qualification.

In this chapter, we analyze the structure of employment and job creation in Jordan over the period from 2010 to 2016. This period coincided with a notable downturn in the economy, which substantially reduced the rate of job creation. Nonetheless, Jordan continued to rely on a growing population of migrant workers whose numbers were further boosted by the influx of Syrian refugees, resulting in approximately one out of two new jobs going to a non-Jordanian. For Jordanians, employment rates continued to fall, and employment became more precarious for the poorest, least educated workers, despite an increase in the share of public sector employment. Unskilled Jordanian males shifted out of informal regular wage employment into irregular work as well as non-employment. With regard to labor market dynamics, the share of the public sector in the first-time employment of new entrants had started to increase after an extended decline. The increase has now reversed again, but many recent entrants still managed to obtain public sector jobs five years after entry. The transition from school to work is very protracted, with a large fraction of youth remaining in the not in education, employment or training (NEET) state for an extended period of time.