Ragui Assaad

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Minnesota

What occupations in Egypt are (potentially) green and what are their characteristics? In this report, we rely on two commonly used databases, the O*NET database, developed for the U.S., and the ESCO database, developed for the European Union, to estimate two alternative greenness indices for occupations in Egypt. The greenness indices are based on...

In a nutshell • Egypt's labor force participation rates continue to decline, particularly among younger men and educated women. • Unemployment has decreased, but this is driven primarily by falling labor force participation rather than improved job prospects. • The "echo" generation of the youth bulge will enter the labor market within the next dec...

This paper introduces the 2023 wave of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS). This is the fifth wave of the ELMPS, following a panel of households and individuals from 1998, 2006, 2012, and 2018 into 2023. The ELMPS tracks individuals even as they form new households and includes these households in the sample. Waves since 2006 have also adde...

Using data from the 2023 and earlier waves of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey, this paper investigates trends in labor supply in Egypt, with a particular focus on declines in participation and employment rates among both men and women over time. The paper explores the demographic drivers of labor supply, including fertility and population growt...

As of 2022, Sudan was home to 1.1 million refugees and 3.7 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), along with a substantial population that had previously experienced displacement. The Sudan Labor Market Panel Survey (SLMPS) 2022 over-sampled locations hosting the displaced in order to facilitate research on refugees and IDPs. This paper inves...

Formalizing firms can potentially increase the tax base, expand safety and social protections for workers, create good jobs, and promote firm growth. However, the costs and processes of formality may be too challenging for some firms to bear. Thus, informal firms may not be able to survive the transition to formality, and attempts to expand formali...

Sudan is a primarily agrarian economy. Formal employment or even wage employment comprises a relatively small proportion of the productive activities in which individuals engage. In this paper we examine the broad spectrum of involvement in economic work activities by gender, including wage employment, self-employment and unpaid family labor, both...

Innovations to date in detecting women's employment have focused primarily on improving individual-level questions. This paper explores an alternative approach, using data on household enterprises and asking who participates in these activities. This research uses the latest waves of the Labor Market Panel Surveys for the Arab Republic of Egypt (20...

Sudan's economy, society, and labor market have experienced a large number of shocks since Sudan's last household survey in 2014/15. Pre-existing political and economic challenges contributed to the revolution in 2018 and substantial political change in 2019, followed by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and further political and economic turmoil in 2...

Although it is well-established in the literature that unemployment is a labour market insertion problem in the Middle East and North Africa, the dynamics driving unemployment remain poorly understood. Using data from the Labor Market Panel Surveys in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, we offer insights into youth unemployment by studying flows into and o...

School-to-work transitions for egypt’s youth Ragui Assaad from Humphrey School of Public Affairs, at the University of Minnesota, argues that structural reforms result in increasingly difficult and unequal school-to-work transitions for Egypt’s youth. Egypt adopted a series of structural reforms since the 1990s designed to curb the size of the publ...

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only led to a health crisis, but also to economic and labor market crises. In an effort to avert the public health threat, countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) initially put in place some of the world's most stringent government responses. This paper explores how labor market outcomes for MENA workers h...

This paper describes the new Sudan Labor Market Panel Survey (SLMPS) 2022, the first nationally representative survey in Sudan in almost a decade. The paper details the design of the survey, including the topics covered by this multipurpose household survey and the complexities of the sampling strategy, which over-sampled refugees and the internall...

Sudan’s economy and society have been repeatedly disrupted by political turmoil since 2018, with challenges further compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. How this turbulent period has affected Sudan’s labor market was previously unknown, as Sudan’s last household survey was in 2014/15. This paper investigates the state of Sudan’s labor market as of...

Supporting ICT employment opportunities for women in Egypt Ragui Assaad and Irene Selwaness examine the increase of women in ICT jobs in Egypt, as well as gender disparities and the efforts to promote ICT employment growth. With the increasing withdrawal of the public sector as a major employer in Egypt, the Egyptian labour market has become increa...

This short article examines the increase of women in ICT jobs in Egypt, as well as gender disparities and the efforts to promote ICT employment growth

This report examines the growth of ICT jobs in Egypt, where ICT jobs are defined as (1) ICT occupations in ICT industries, (2) Non-ICT occupations in ICT industries, and (3) ICT occupations in non-ICT industries. The analysis uses microdata from nationally representative annual waves of the official Labour Force Survey (LFS) from 2009 to 2021 compl...

Demographic pressures on the Egyptian labour market Ragui Assaad, Professor from Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, explores the upcoming resumption of demographic pressures on the Egyptian labour market and what can be done about it. Although unemployment rates have been falling in Egypt in recent years, this trend w...

The Middle East and North Africa region struggled to meet the employment aspirations of its increasingly educated youth in the aftermath of structural reforms. This article examines the evolution of initial labor market outcomes across pre- and post-reform cohorts of school leavers by education and socioeconomic status (SES) in Egypt, Jordan, and T...

This chapter investigates the character of labor supply and especially female labor force participation in Egypt and its evolution over the twenty-year span from 1988 to 2018 using various waves of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey. The chapter pays particular attention to women’s labor force outcomes while examining trends in labor force partici...

In terms of overall growth rates, by 2018 the Egyptian economy had rebounded from the slowdown it experienced as a result of the global financial crisis, the 2011 revolution and the revolution’s aftermath. In this chapter we explore whether the recovery in growth rates was accompanied by an improvement in the quantity, and especially the quality, o...

This book updates our understanding of how the Egyptian labor market, economy, and society have evolved in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, the subsequent political upheaval and substantial economic challenges that followed, and the economic reforms introduced in late 2016. Not only was job creation anemic over the period from 2012...

Marriage is a central stage in the transition to adulthood in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This paper investigates the effect of marriage on women’s employment in MENA, examining how different types of work are affected by relatively early marriage, defined as marriage by the median age of marriage. An important contribution of this pap...

I argue in this paper that although recent developments had temporarily reduced demographic pressures on the Egyptian labor market, such pressures will return with a vengeance in the next decade. The sizable echo generation born between 2005 and 2015 is the reflection of the large youth bulge generation born in the early 1980s; a reflection that wa...

Forced displacement has disrupted Syrian refugees' lives and exposed them to new communities and norms. This paper assesses how gender norms shape the lives of Syrian refugee adolescent girls in Jordan, using nationally representative data. Factor analysis is used to summarize a variety of beliefs and behavioral aspects of norms: gender role attitu...

In a nutshell • Among the four MENA countries we examine, only Egypt managed to maintain a positive growth rate of 1.5% in 2020. The economic contraction in 2020 ranged from 8.8% in Tunisia and 6.3% in Morocco to 1.6% in Jordan. • In the contracting countries, the lockdown resulted in large losses in the second quarter of 2020, with varying degrees...

This paper introduces the 2018 wave of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey (ELMPS), previously fielded in 1998, 2006, and 2012. The ELMPS has already become the primary source of data for a large number of scholarly and policy studies on the labor market and human development issues in Egypt, and this new wave will further enhance its value as a cr...

G2LM|LIC Policy Brief

This paper introduces the 2016 wave of the Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey (JLMPS). It is an essential reference for users of this innovative and valuable dataset, which adds to the growing series of labor market panel surveys (LMPSs) produced by the Economic Research Forum (ERF). The 2016 wave is a follow-up on the initial 2010 wave. There has be...

The transition to adulthood around the world is increasingly characterized by young people's desire to form independent households. Forming such households in Egypt requires buying or building a dwelling or obtaining a rental unit. Policies governing housing markets, such as rent control, and limited financing options have historically made access...

Due to COVID-19, wage workers in Morocco and Tunisia have lost jobs, been temporarily laid off, experienced reduced hours, reduced wages, and delays in pay • The impact of COVID-19 on wage workers has been minimal for public sector workers, but substantial in the private sector, and especially for informal workers, irregular workers, and those wor...

This paper investigates the impact of migration shocks on housing conditions and rental prices for the local population. The identification comes from the regional variation in the large influx of Syrian refugees to Jordan in the wake of the Syrian conflict which started in 2011. Combining detailed household-level surveys with information on where...

We investigate the role of employment in enabling and constraining marriage for young men and women in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia. Survival analysis methods for age at marriage are applied to comparable labor market panel surveys from Egypt (2012), Jordan (2010), and Tunisia (2014), which include detailed labor market histories. For men, employment...

Despite rapidly rising female educational attainment and the closing, if not reversal, of the gender gap in education, female labor force participation rates in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region remain low and stagnant. This phenomenon is known as the MENA paradox. Even if increases in participation are observed, they are typically in...

The educated have figured prominently in protests and elections in several Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries. The dominant explanation for this pattern centers on grievances and unfulfilled aspirations due to low education returns in the MENA. However, the pattern may simply reflect the unequal participation observed in many democracies...

Creating jobs, especially good jobs, is one of the greatest challenges facing Egypt. This paper investigates the nature of job growth in Egypt, including the firm, industry, and worker characteristics that are related to job growth. Using data from Egypt's establishment censuses linked to various firm and labor surveys, we examine job growth in pri...

Youth in Egypt hold rising aspirations for their adult lives, yet face an increasingly uncertain and protracted transition from school to work and thus into adulthood. This paper investigates how labor market insertion has been evolving over time in Egypt and how the nature of youth transitions relates to gender and social class. The study examines...

This paper investigates the character of labor supply and especially female labor force participation in Egypt and its evolution over the twenty-year span from 1988 to 2018 using various waves of the Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey. The paper pays particular attention to women's labor force outcomes while examining trends in labor force participati...

In this chapter, we analyze the structure of employment and job creation in Jordan over the period from 2010 to 2016. This period coincided with a notable downturn in the economy, which substantially reduced the rate of job creation. Nonetheless, Jordan continued to rely on a growing population of migrant workers whose numbers were further boosted...

Jordan has experienced a substantial influx of refugees from Syria since 2011. The Jordanian government and the international community have expended significant resources to address the urgent humanitarian needs of these refugees and to mitigate negative impacts on the Jordanian population. Although several data sources describe the number and cha...

This chapter investigates the changing character of labor supply in Jordan from 2010 to 2016. We examine recent demographic developments as well as the rapid increases in educational attainment among Jordanians. A particular focus of the chapter is on the demographic changes, such as the large increase in the working age population, generated by th...

Education is widely considered as the most important path to social mobility in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), yet there are very few studies of the extent to which it fulfills this promise. In this paper we use survey data from eight MENA countries to understand the relationship between schooling attainment of youth and the circumstances...

Education is widely considered as the most important path to social mobility in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), yet there are very few studies of the extent to which it fulfills this promise. In this paper we use survey data from eight MENA countries to understand the relationship between schooling attainment of youth and the circumstances...

Measures of consumption and poverty are critical metrics of the wellbeing of individuals, their households, communities, and countries. Collecting data on consumption and poverty is challenging and costly, and therefore these measures are only infrequently available in survey data. In this paper, we demonstrate how information commonly available in...

This paper examines the evolution of initial labor market outcomes across cohorts of school leavers by education and socioeconomic status in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia. As educational attainment has risen, youth in the Middle East and North Africa have experienced increasingly protracted and difficult school-to-work transitions. The decline in the p...

Public sector hiring had been an essential component of the social bargains that have maintained political stability in the Middle East and North Africa. As these bargains have eroded, public sector workforces are contracting in relative terms. The downsizing was primarily achieved through a partial freeze on hiring, while maintaining lifetime job...

There is potential for measurement problems in both retrospective and panel microdata. In this paper, we compare results on basic indicators related to labor markets and their dynamics from retrospective and panel survey data in Egypt, in order to determine the conditions under which results are similar or different. Specifically, we (1) assess the...

Creating jobs, especially good jobs, is one of the greatest challenges facing Egypt. This paper investigates the nature of job growth in Egypt, including the firm, industry, and worker characteristics that are related to job growth. Using data from Egypt's establishment censuses linked to various firm and labor surveys, we examine job growth in pri...

This paper examines whether the Action Plan for Promoting Employment and Combating Unemployment, a labor market intermediation program adopted by the Algerian government in 2008, reduced the informality of employment in Algeria. Using repeated cross-section data from the Household Survey on Employment for the period from 1997 to 2013, and a differe...

Theoretically, in perfectly competitive markets with full information, marginal productivity of labor and workers' wages should be equalized across firms and wages should not be linked to the productivity of a firm. Empirically examining the relationship between wages and productivity across various types of firms can reveal important deviations fr...

In Egypt and Jordan, there is a substantial mismatch between the output of the higher education system and the needs of the labor market. Both demand and supply-side factors could be driving this mismatch. This paper tests a key supply-side issue, whether differences in the institutional structures and incentives in higher education affect the labo...

This paper investigates the impact of migration shocks on housing conditions and rental prices for locals. The identification comes from the regional variation in the large influx of Syrian refugees to Jordan in the wake of the Syrian conflict starting in 2011. We employ a difference in difference approach to evaluate the change in housing conditio...

This paper introduces the 2016 wave of the Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey (JLMPS). The 2016 wave is a follow up on the initial 2010 wave. There has been substantial turmoil in the region since 2010, including the onset of the Syrian conflict and influx of refugees into Jordan. The 2016 wave over-sampled areas with a high proportion of non-Jordani...

This paper investigates the changing character of labor supply in Jordan in light of recent demographic developments as well as the rapid increases in educational attainment among Jordanians. A particular focus of the paper is on the demographic changes generated by the recent refugee influx. Labor force participation, as well as its components of...

This chapter considers the global challenge of youth employment, arguing that employment inadequacy among young people is a much broader phenomenon than youth unemployment as conventionally defined. It first provides an overview of the youth bulge phenomenon in developing countries before discussing current efforts to address it. In particular, it...

Introduction Social and economic challenges facing young people today must be understood in terms of complex interactions between unique demographic trends and specific economic contexts. There has been an unprecedented growth in the number of young people in the Global South in the past two decades. The regional manifestations of this growth, howe...

Marriage is a central stage in the transition to adulthood in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This paper builds on the existing literature on the effect of marriage on women’s employment in MENA. Besides examining how different types of work are affected by early marriage (defined as marriage by the median age of marriage) in a multivariat...

Most explanations of the recent political upheavals in Egypt since 2011 include a reference to rising inequality, but the usual indicators of income inequality in Egypt do not support that inequality was on the rise prior to the uprisings. In this paper we provide measures of inequality of opportunity in wages and consumption for Egypt at different...