Middle East / North Africa and the Millennium Development Goals ...

100
Markus Loewe
similar: there 31 % of the 15- to 24-year-olds were jobless in 1990. In
2001, the country had a youth unemployment rate of 37 %, the figure for
Mauritania was 45 %, and for Syria 73 %. No data exist for the 1990 situation
in these three countries. On average, roughly 50 % of the 15- to 24year-olds
in the MENA region are likely to have been without work in
1990 and the figure has most probably risen since then (see Table A11,
Annex).
Unemployment in general is very widespread in the MENA region. Ali
and Elbadawi (2000) estimate that one person out of five potential laborforce
participants in the region is unemployed. At the end of the 1990s the
official unemployment rate in Tunisia, Syria, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and
Oman was roughly 15 %; 20 % in Morocco and Lebanon, and over 25 %
in Algeria, Libya, and Yemen. The smaller Gulf states have official unemployment
rates of something between 3 and 8 %. In fact, however, it is
likely that a far larger share of the labor force is looking for work. In Bahrain
e.g. the percentage is apt to be closer to 16 than 3 %. Likewise, in Jordan
the unemployment rate is likely to be above 30 % rather than 14 %, as
official statistics say. In Egypt, it is closer to 25 than to 12 %, and the Palestinian
Territories are assumed to have a rate of more than 50 %, not the
18 % officially stated (Loewe 2004, 430).
During the 1990s a high number of jobs were created in the MENA region.
The growth elasticity of job creation was 0.7. This means that the growth
in the number of jobs per percentage point of economic growth was 0.7. A
similarly high ratio was otherwise noted only for Latin America. The figure
for the European Union was 0.3, for the US and for South and East
Asia (without China) 0.4, and for China 0.1 (Gardner 2003).
All the same, unemployment in the MENA countries rose appreciably during
the 1990s: from an average of 15 % in 1990 to 20 % in 2001. On average
the number of jobs rose by 2.6 % per annum; but at the same time, the
labor force was growing by 2.9 % per annum. The reason for this is that
cohorts with high birth rates were entering the labor market. Birth rates
are, however, now showing a downward trend, which means in effect that
population growth is declining in nearly all countries in the region. This
new trend, however, has not yet translated into lower labor force growth
rates. This will happen only in some years, and the decline will, at least
initially, be slow. Until then, millions of school graduates will be entering
the labor market, and the labor force of all MENA countries will grow
German Development Institute