Thursday March 28th, 2024
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Egypt’s Unemployment Rate in First Quarter of 2018 Falls to 10.6%

Though it might look like a minuscule difference from last year, it is everything but insignificant, and progress nonetheless.

Staff Writer

In a spot of slightly upbeat news regarding Egypt’s age-old unemployment problem, the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) has recently announced that Egypt’s Unemployment Rate for its first quarter (the first 3 months) of 2018 has reached a low of 10.6% (3.9 million unemployed), up from 12% (409 million unemployed) in Q1 2017.

So in comparison to Q1 of last year, 37,000 Egyptians have been employed in Q1 2018, bumping up the work force to around 29.1 million people. According to Amr al-Garhy – Egypt’s Minister of Finance – the country’s recent leaps and bounds in economic reform have borne significant fruit over the last two to three years, successfully managing to provide a variety of job opportunities for Egypt’s stagnating worker base. The Minister also acknowledged that the recent “mega governmental projects” played quite the significant hand in boosting employment.

Some time ago, Advisor to the Minister of Planning – Ahmed Kamali – had said that for Egypt to properly tackle its overwhelming unemployment problem, it would need to generate roughly 700,000 employment opportunities, and likely even more if it were to wage a proper war on the phenomenon. With the way things are looking (despite the turbulent circumstances), we might just be able to cut it soon enough.

Main photo from Marwa Morgan.