Report by: Ibrahim Saif and Joulan Abdul Khalek from Carnegie Endowment
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2011
Creating good jobs for young people in the Middle East is a longstanding challenge, but one that is now attracting more attention in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Unemployment among youth in the Middle East is hovering around 25 percent. (For comparison purposes, unemployment among youth in the United States and United Kingdom, which are still mired in the fallout of the financial crisis, is 18 percent and 19 percent, respectively.) While it is difficult to generalize about youth unemployment across the entire Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, it is possible to discern some important common themes.
First, unemployment is high among both young men and young women. Second, unemployment is structural in nature and not only linked to cyclical factors. The link between growth and job creation is also weak in MENA countries. In part, this is because growth is overly reliant on the oil sector. The public sector, in addition, is bloated in most of the MENA region, while the private sector is underdeveloped. Finally, there is a mismatch between education and skill levels among the unemployed and labor market demand.
مبادرة "تكريم" للإنجازات العربيّة 