Egypt’s unemployment rate declined to 7.7 percent in the first quarter of 2020, down from eight percent during the same quarter of 2019, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS).

On Thursday, CAPMAS announced that the unemployment rate increased to 9.2 percent from end of March to end of April due to the preventive measures that the government has adopted to contain the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It added that the labour force increased by 0.2 percent to reach 29.008 million individuals, up from 28.95 million in the first quarter of 2020, while the unemployed recorded 2.236 million people, down by 31,000 in the same quarter of 2019.

The rate of the unemployed aged between 15 and 29 declined to 68.5 percent in the first quarter of 2020, down from 69.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to CAPMAS.

It also announced that the number of employed persons slightly increased to 26.772 million in the first quarter of 2020, up from 26.621 million in the fourth quarter of 2019.

In its recent global and regional outlooks, issued in April, the International Monetary Fund expected Egypt’s unemployment rate to hit 10.3 percent in 2020, and 11.6 percent in 2021 amid the COVID-19 crisis, compared to 8.8 percent in 2019.

According to Trading Economics (TE), Egypt’s unemployment rate is expected to hit 10 percent by the end of the current quarter, estimating it to stand at 7.2 percent in 12 months’ time.

In the long-term, TE projected the rate to trend around eight percent in 2021 and 7.6 percent in 2022.