Unemployment rate records 8.1% in Q1 2019

CAIRO – 15 February 2019: Egypt’s unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent during the first quarter of 2019, compared to 10.6 percent in the same quarter of 2018, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS).

During the fourth quarter of 2018, Egypt’s unemployment rate declined 2.4 percent to 8.9 percent, compared to the same quarter of 2017.

The report revealed that the size of the workforce reached 27.968 million people.

CAPMAS said that the number of jobless people reached 2.267 million, with a decrease of 827,000 on a year on year basis and 224,000 on a quarter on quarter basis.

In the third quarter of 2018, the unemployment rate declined 1.9 percent, compared to the same quarter of 2017, and in the first quarter, it decreased 1.4 percent, compared to 12 percent in the same period of 2017.

Head of the Sustainable Development Unit at the Ministry of Planning, Howaida Barakat, stated in September that Egypt’s unemployment rate witnessed an unprecedented decline, recording 11.3 percent in 2017/2018. She added that this rate is expected to reach 8.4 percent in 2022.

Finance Ministry also said that the unemployment rate is anticipated to reach 7.1 percent in June 2022, down from 9.9 percent in June 2018.

Egypt’s budget seeks to lower the unemployment rate to 10.4 percent with an inflation rate of 13 percent.

Egypt 2030 Vision aims to reduce unemployment from the current percentage to 4 percent.

Planning Minister Hala el-Saeed previously said that Egypt aims to provide about 750,000 job opportunities in 2018/2019 by developing the absorptive capacity of the labor market to gradually provide 870,000 opportunities in 2021/2022.

In 2017, Egypt’s unemployment rate slipped to 11.8 percent, compared to 12.5 percent in 2016.