Egypt's unemployment rate record 7.7% in Q1 2020: CAPMAS

CAIRO – 14 May 2020: Egypt's Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) announced on Saturday that Egypt's unemployment rate reached 7.7 percent during the first quarter of 2020, compared to 8 percent during the fourth quarter of 2019, marking a decrease of 0.3 percent.

Comparing to the first quarter of 2019, the unemployment rate decreased 0.4 percent.

In April, the unemployment rate increased to 9.2 percent due to COVID-19 pandemic as the government took precautionary measures to confront virus including closing schools, the suspension of air traffic and the closure of shops.

The number of unemployed people recorded 2.236 million, (1,076 million males, 1,160 million females), representing 7.7 percent of the total workforce, with a decrease of 93,000 unemployed from the fourth quarter of 2019, and a decrease of 31,000 unemployed from the corresponding quarter of the previous year.

Earlier, Planning Minister Hala el-Saeed stated that Egypt's unemployment rate to dip to 8.5 percent by end of 2020/2021 in case COVID-19 crisis ended during FY 2019/2020.

Egypt’s budget seeks to lower the unemployment rate to 10.4 percent with an inflation rate of 13 percent.

Egypt 2030 Vision aims to reduce unemployment from the current percentage to 4 percent.

Saeed previously said that Egypt aims to provide about 750,000 job opportunities in 2018/2019 by developing the absorptive capacity of the labor market to gradually provide 870,000 opportunities in 2021/2022.