Arab youth unemployment 'worse than pre-Covid levels'

Eight Arab countries posted higher jobless rates last year compared to 2019

University students at an anti-government protest in Beirut. About 2.5 million people were unemployed across Arab states last year, the ILO says. Reuters

Youth unemployment in many Arab states is worse than in the years before the Covid pandemic, a report from the International Labour Organisation has found.

The unemployment rate in Arab states last year was pegged at 28 per cent, equal to about 2.5 million people, which is nearly 4 per cent of the global total of 64.9 million. That is up from 27 per cent in 2019, before Covid-19 hit.

Arab states covered by the ILO include Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, the occupied Palestinian territories, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the UAE and Yemen.

Eight of them – Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria, the UAE and Yemen – posted higher unemployment rates last year compared with 2019. It is one of three subregions – alongside East Asia and South-East Asia – where this has been deemed “critically high”, the ILO said.

That is tied for fifth highest, along with Eastern Europe, and represents a continuation of the pre-Covid-19 trend of rising youth unemployment rates, the report said. The ILO defines youth unemployment as people not working who are aged between 15 and 24 years old.

Saudi Arabia, the Arab world's largest economy, posted the biggest decline in youth unemployment last year, with the rate down 8.6 per cent, from 16.3 per cent in 2019. Oman and Kuwait were the only other states where rates have fallen.

Arab states also posted the highest rate of youth not in employment, education or training (Neet), with one in three young people being in this group, the ILO said.

That puts Arab states under “off track” status, defined as the youth Neet rate posting no change or increase between 2015 and 2023, and higher than 15 per cent last year, along with North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, it said.

With those three regions combining for 33 per cent of the global youth population, this means a third of the world’s young people live in a country that is “off track” in its progress to meet a UN Sustainable Development Goal target for “substantially” reducing youth Neet.

The youth unemployment situation “cautions us about the growing casualisation of work for youth and about the widening gap in the supply of young graduates and the number of suitable jobs available to absorb them”, Mia Seppo, assistant director general at the ILO, wrote in the report.

“There is a clear message … on the urgency to do better to combat the circumstances of unequal access to opportunities and to effectively target actions to bring transformative change to disadvantaged young people.”

Addressing youth employment has long been a challenge, underpinned by factors including a lack of opportunities and low wages for those entering the labour force.

In the Arab world, several countries, led by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, have launched plans to boost the jobs sector including bolstering the participation of women in the labour force.

Compared with the ILO's statistics from Arab states, youth unemployment rates are lower in the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, with last year's estimates at 10.7 per cent and 16.2 per cent, data from the World Bank shows.

“With uncertain times ahead, the well-being of youth is a growing concern,” the ILO report said.

Arab states, along with North Africa, have a “critically low” youth employment-to-population ratio, with fewer than one in three young men working and fewer than one in 10 young women, the ILO said.

The employment ratios of young men and women – especially the latter – fall well below what is reported in other regions. As the two subregions also have the world’s highest youth Neet rates, it is clear that many of the non-working young people are also not engaged in schooling.

“Primarily, young women … are not accessing education or employment,” Ms Seppo said, which “acknowledges that the mismatches between what is available and what is expected by young people in their labour market transitions can have important consequences”.

Still, the silver lining is that while the unemployment rate in Arab states is expected to rise to 28.6 per cent in 2024, it will drop to 27.7 per cent in 2025, the ILO said.

It attributes this to resilient economic growth rates and a strong rebound in labour demand that benefited young labour market entrants in the post-crisis setting.

In the case of Arab states, “improvements in youth unemployment rates are projected for both young men and young women, although true success will only come if more young women and men are being engaged in good quality jobs”, the ILO said.