Unemployment falls slightly to 12.8 percent

Unemployment fell to 12.8 percent in the first quarter of 2015, down slightly from 12.9 percent the previous quarter,  state statistics agency CAPMAS announced Sunday.

CAPMAS attributes the decline to an improvement in economic activity. GDP growth for the first half of the 2014/15 fiscal year was a strong 5.6 percent, with the full-year figure estimated to come in at 4 percent.

At 12.8 percent, the first quarter figures are the lowest recorded since the third quarter of 2012, when the figure stood at 12.5 percent. They are also a marked improvement over the 13.4 percent recorded in the same quarter of 2014. 

According to CAPMAS, during the quarter Egypt’s labor force reached 27.7 million out of a population of more than 88.7 million. Some 3.5 million of those are unemployed. 

Egypt’s official unemployment figures are widely considered to be optimistic, and do not factor in the millions of people working in the informal sector.

Youth and women are more vulnerable to unemployment, and higher education is no guarantee of finding a job.

Female unemployment has held relatively steady, recording 24.7 percent in Q1 of 2015, compared to 24.8 percent in both the previous quarter and in Q1 of 2014. Male unemployment, by contrast, dropped to 9.1 percent in Q1 of 2015, compared to 9.2 percent the previous quarter and 9.9 percent a year before. Only about 22.2 percent of women are part of Egypt’s labor force, according to CAPMAS.

Almost two-thirds of the unemployed are young people between the ages of 15 and 29 years old. More than three quarters of unemployed workers have at least a high school education, while nearly 30 percent have university or post graduate degrees.