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Egypt’s unemployment down to 7.2% in Q1 2022

May 16, 2022 at 2:03 pm

Workers in Cairo, Egypt on 21 January 2020 [KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images]

The unemployment rate in Egypt dropped to 7.2 per cent during the first quarter of 2022, down from 7.4 per cent in the previous quarter, the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) announced yesterday.

“The number of unemployed people in the first quarter of 2022 declined to 2.145 million, 1,220 million of whom were males and 925,000 were females,” CAPMAS said, adding that the drop amounted to “55,000 people.”

The state-run agency explained that the unemployment for the total male workforce had reached “4.9 per cent, compared to 5.2 per cent in the previous quarter,” noting that the female share amounted to “17.7 per cent, compared to 17.8 per cent in the quarter before.”

Egypt’s economy has been significantly affected by the recent Russian war on Ukraine, as the North African state imports most of its wheat needs from Ukraine.

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Last month, the Egyptian Minister of Manpower, Mohamed Saafan, said his country’s recent national development projects had helped in the “creation of job opportunities and the decline in unemployment,” noting that the projects had secured “around a million job opportunities every year despite sharp population growth.”

One third of Egyptians live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank, this is expected to have increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and recent war in Ukraine.