High rates of youth unemployment in North Africa

In North Africa and the Middle East, the youth unemployment rate at 25 per cent, is the highest in the world. But that statistic alone doesn't tell the whole story.
World Bank researchers are finding that the actual number of jobless people between the ages of 15 and 29 in the region could be much higher. Many young people who are out of school and out of work are not reflected in the statistics because they are not looking for work.
Young urban males, in particular, are at a serious disadvantage in the labour market, with many underemployed, employed in off-the-books informal work, or not working at all.
"It's a huge problem, and there a no quick fixes,” said Gloria La Cava, a senior social scientist who leads youth programmes in the World Bank's Middle East and North Africa (MNA) region and the youth partnership with the League of Arab States.
New research is being conducted in Morocco, Egypt, and Jordan on the main trends in the employment and social outcomes for young people – work that has involved piloting approaches to the problem, collecting data, and developing a new instrument for measuring youth participation in the labor market and community life.
Research has found that unemployment and underemployment are taking a toll on young people, often forcing them to wait years to obtain housing, get married and have children. As a consequence, young men between the ages of 25 and 29 in the region have the lowest marriage rates in the developing world at only 50 per cent.
"Across the board, the key challenge now faced is how to address unemployment that has been above 10 per cent throughout the past 10 years or so," said Shamshad Akhtar, World Bank vice-president for the Middle East and North Africa, at a conference in Tunisia.
She said reasons for persistently high unemployment in the region include economic growth that has been below the region's potential, the failure of most countries to seize emerging technological opportunities, weak quality of education despite impressive achievements in primary and secondary education enrollments, and mismatches between the supply and demand of skills.
"In today’s world, competitiveness depends on firms that employ a well-educated, technically skilled workforce that is capable of adopting new technologies and selling sophisticated goods – hence a priority on higher-level cognitive as well as non-cognitive skills," Akhtar said.
The situation is one reason why several governments in the region are increasingly interested in developing youth services or volunteer programmes. Underprivileged and less-educated youth, in particular, could benefit from programs that promote social cohesion and offer 'opportunities for volunteering and traveling to other parts of the country to improve job skills and prospects for future employment,” said La Cava.
Such programmes, along with vocational training and partnerships with the private sector, could help address a mismatch in the skills acquired through education and those demanded by the marketplace.
A recent study found that one-third of businesses reported that lack of appropriately skilled labor constrained their growth.
The World Bank is working with the League of Arab States, a leader in the field of youth affairs in the region, to jumpstart youth-oriented programmes in the region, including voluntary service. A proposed grant would help the League and several countries set up the programmes.