Labour market performance and migration flows - European ...

European CommissionOccasional Paper 60, Volume IHowever, in some AMCs, such as Egypt, the qualifications held by the labour force are improvingsubstantially. Indeed, a significant growth in educational attainment in Egypt has altered thecomposition of the labour force over the past three decades. In the 1980s, 40% of those entering thelabour force had not achieved a primary level of education. By 2005, 70% had received a secondaryeducation or better (Assaad 2007). In this respect, the most dramatic shift in the educationalcomposition of the male working age population is the sharp increase in the proportion of technicalsecondary school graduates from 1988 through 2006. This was accompanied by a steady reduction inthe proportion of illiterate males and literate males with no educational degrees. The proportion ofuniversity graduates has also increased over the last 25 years, but at a slower pace than that oftechnical secondary graduates. The male labour market is, therefore, increasingly dominated bytechnical secondary school graduates who now make up over 30% of the male working age populationin both urban and rural areas. The educational composition of the female working age populationexhibits similar trends: the share of vocational secondary school graduates has increased, especially inrural areas, and the share of illiterates has come down significantly. These compositional shifts haveenormous implications for female labour force participation, since female participation rates increasesignificantly once women reach the technical secondary level.This particular case notwithstanding, in general terms, it can be stated that the level of qualificationof workers in AMCs is very low, to the point of jeopardizing both the development prospects of theircountries (bleak prospects for productivity increases) and the possibility of benefiting from theincreasing demand for medium-skilled labour coming from developed countries, and in particularEurope, in the coming decades. A recent report by the World Bank focusing on labour migrationhighlights this risk:“the [Middle East and North Africa, MENA] labour force is currently predominantly low skilled. Ifthese ratios do not change (and assuming constant labour force participation rates), [by 2050] thelabour force under 40 years of age will mainly expand among those with primary education or less(25 million) and to a much lesser extent among the secondary educated (9 million) and the tertiaryeducated (7 million). […] Poor education outcomes in MENA countries remain an obstacle tocompete in global labor markets. More important, MENA’s education systems do not deliver andremain at the root of MENA’s educational and technological shortcomings.”(World Bank 2009a, pp. 40-48).As Figure 1.2.1 shows clearly, although educational attainment more than doubled between 1980and 2000 in MENA countries, there is still an important gap to be filled in comparison to otherdeveloping countries. Beyond this low level of formal qualification, the lack of skills demanded by thelabour market (be it due to a misalignment of demand and supply of labour for certain disciplines or tothe lack, among “skilled” labour, of soft skills such as communication or labour environment skills) isthe other education-related challenge in the region.32