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Egypt: Unemployment down to 8.1% in 2019

May 16, 2019 at 12:42 pm

Street art illustrating a woman living in poverty in Egypt [Samia elsaid/Twitter]

Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) yesterday revealed that the unemployment rate fell to 8.1 per cent in the first quarter of this year compared with 10.6 per cent a year ago and 8.9 per cent in the last quarter of 2018.

The number of unemployed people reached 2.267 million in the first quarter, down 827,000 from the corresponding quarter of 2018 and 224,000 fewer than in the fourth quarter of 2018, the Statistics Authority said in a statement.

The data showed that the number of people who are of work age stood at 27.968 million.

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The unemployment rate among males was 5.7 per cent and among females was 18.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2019, compared to 6.4 per cent and 19.6 per cent respectively in the same period of 2018, the statement said.

Government officials attribute the drop to the huge national development projects the country is currently implementing through which a considerable portion of the labour market’s capacity has been absorbed.

In its 2030 Vision, Egypt aims to reduce unemployment rates to four per cent.