Marwa worked in the human resources department of a company in Mohandessin close to Downtown Cairo when she was living in Nasr City in the eastern part of Cairo.

When her first child was born, she managed to hold onto her job by hiring a babysitter to care for her baby while she was in the office. But her problem was the long hours, and she was never home before six in the evening.   

After she gave birth to her second child, her long hours were no longer practical, so she decided to stay at home to look after her children. When her children began to go to school, she started to look for work but could not find anything suitable. She has now almost given up on the idea of working altogether.

Marwa is not the only woman disheartened with the labour market in Egypt. Others like her have reacted similarly though their situations differ. Some cannot find someone to take care of their children while they are at work and find quality daycare too expensive. Others are kept from working by their husbands.

While the reasons may vary, the result is the same: fewer women are seeking jobs today, recent studies have concluded.

Women’s labour force participation rates in Egypt, already low at 23 per cent in 2012, were found to have fallen further in 2023 to 18 per cent, according to a study titled “The Evolution of Labour Supply in Egypt Through 2023”.

The study shows that declines in labour force participation and employment among women are concentrated among more educated women of marriage age and are steepest among university graduates.

It says that this group has historically relied on government employment, but as public-sector employment opportunities dwindled, “women initially had high unemployment rates as they queued for the increasingly scarce government jobs but are now leaving the labour force altogether.”

The share of public-sector employment in Egypt fell from 30 per cent in 2012 to 21 per cent in 2023, according to an Economic Research Forum (ERF) policy brief titled “Employment Conditions in Egypt Are Improving, But Only for Some: Findings from the 2023 Wave of the Egypt Labour Market Panel Survey.”

The briefing is part of a series of studies distributed this week during a workshop organised by the ERF. They were carried out using data from the Egypt Labour Market Panel Survey (ELMPS), including its recent 2023 wave, and examined developments in demographic trends in Egypt and labour supply behaviour.

The ELMPS 2023 is the fifth longitudinal survey carried out by the ERF, a regional economic think tank, since 1998 in cooperation with the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS).

One of the factors affecting women’s labour force participation is their greater responsibility for unpaid work. According to the study “Unpaid Care Work in Egypt: Gender Gaps in Time Use”, women spend a substantial share of their time on unpaid care work, leaving less time for employment and other activities.

The study says that 84.3 per cent of women in Egypt participate in unpaid care tasks daily, compared with only 33.7 per cent of men. Moreover, women are more involved in both direct and indirect forms of unpaid care work, with a larger gender gap observed in direct care tasks.

It also notes that marriage and childbearing constitute an important life-cycle transition for women “that increases the responsibility of unpaid care work for women but not for men.” Married women participate most extensively in unpaid care work and least in employment activities, the study shows, with women in rural areas doing more unpaid care work than those in urban areas.

Higher education does not seem to make a difference, as women with a university education still spend an average of more than five hours per day on unpaid care work, the study says.

Lower labour market participation is also found among men, mostly younger men up to the age of 35. This has been affecting men of all education groups but is larger for those with intermediate and higher levels of education, according to the study.

The lower participation in the labour market coupled with lower demographic pressures has helped to improve the country’s unemployment figures. Egypt’s unemployment rate stood at 6.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2024, almost half what it was in 2015.

According to “The Evolution of Labour Supply in Egypt Through 2023” study, members of the “youth bulge” generation, the significant proportion of the population aged 16 to 25 years of age, are in their prime working age and their children have not yet reached labour market entry age.

Together with falling participation rates, “this translates into reduced pressures on labour market entry, and in turn into falling unemployment rates,” the study says. However, it also says that these favourable demographic trends will soon end as this generation’s children, what the study calls the “echo” generation, make their way onto the labour market over the next decade.

To prepare for the entrance of this generation, the study stresses the need for the creation of quality jobs, particularly in sectors that can absorb large numbers of young and educated workers.

“Ensuring a competitive private sector will be an important part of facilitating robust job creation,” it says. The study also recommends a better correlation between the education system and the labour market. Many existing jobs do not meet the expectations of the unemployed.

The study also recommends the creation of an enabling environment for women to participate in the workforce by “recognising, reducing, and redistributing care work, promoting flexible work arrangements, and addressing societal norms that discourage female labour participation.”

Overall, the studies are not all negative as they say that some employment conditions are improving. According to the paper “Evolution of the Structure and Quality of Employment in Egypt, 2012-2023,” private formal wage employment is growing after a period when it was declining.

At the same time there has been a noticeable “slowdown in the growth of informal wage employment outside fixed establishments [for example, construction], which is known for notoriously poor working conditions and job precarity,” it says.

Construction work had been growing rapidly in the previous period, but its growth reversed in 2018-2023, according to the study. Moreover, it notes an increase in private wage employment in small and medium-sized establishments.

This “bodes well for improving productivity, working conditions, and job quality in Egypt,” the study says. It finds a rapid growth of own-account work, including self-employment and work as an employer.

To capitalise on these positive developments, a policy briefing on the same issue recommends supporting small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) growth by facilitating credit, market access, and the promotion of a level playing field in the economy.

It also recommends providing incentives to encourage businesses to formalise by reducing the costs of doing so.

It says that development strategies should continue to support sectors that have seen employment growth, such as jobs related to the green transition (utilities), high-end professional and financial services, health and social work, and accommodation and food services, as well as manufacturing, which also saw a recovery between 2018 and 2023.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 28 November, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the title: Steps towards a better labour market