Labor market transitions in Egypt post-Arab Spring

ABSTRACT

This paper examines Egypt’s labor market transition dynamics post-Arab Spring based on the two most recent rounds of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey conducted in 2012 and 2018. In addition to providing disaggregated level analysis by examining labor market transitions by gender, education, and age groups, our paper provides a cross-country perspective by comparing Egypt’s labor market transitions with Jordan’s. Regression analyses focusing on transitions to and from the dominant absorbing labor market states in Egypt – public sector employment for both genders, non-participation for women, and the informal sector for men – show that having a post-secondary education is associated with a lower probability of remaining out of the labor force (OLF) for women who were already OLF at baseline, while being married at baseline is found to be a significant predictor for women to stay out of the labor force if they were already so. As for men, the better educated are found to be more likely to secure formal employment, be it in the public or in the private sector, and also more likely to keep their public formal jobs once they secure them.

KEYWORDS:

• Employment
• informality
• transitions
• labor market
• Egypt

JEL CLASSIFICATIONS:

• J10
• J21
• J22
• J45
• J46

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Lanau, S., Rodríguez-Delgado, D., & Toscani, F. (2018). Colombia Selected Issues. IMF. 17. Gurría, Á. (2019). Presentation of the 2019 Economic Survey of Mexico. OECD.

2 Source: ILO and Encuesta Nacional de Ocupación y Empleo. Data on the year of 2020. Retrieved January 2022.

3 Source: ILO and Gran Encuesta Integrada de Hogares. Data on the year of 2020. Retrieved January 2022.

4 Source: ILO, Malaysia Labour Force Survey, and Indonesia National Labour Force Survey. Data on the year of 2020. Retrieved January 2022.

5 Source: ILO and national statistical offices. Data on the year of 2020. Retrieved January 2022.

6 In unreported results, we feature a comparison between labor market transitions for women in Egypt and labor market transitions for women in Mexico. The findings suggest that female labor markets in Egypt and Jordan are distinct from labor market dynamics in Mexico.