The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) on Sunday announced that Egypt’s unemployment rate had reached 9.3 percent of the working population, representing some 2.3 million people, as of the end of this year’s third quarter. The figure stood at 8.5 percent at the end of the third quarter last year.
Within this year’s third quarter, some 237,000 people joined the ranks of the unemployed.
According to recent studies by CAPMAS, unemployment in urban areas reached 14.2 percent. Rural areas in the border provinces recorded an increase of 1.2 percent in unemployment since last year, while rural areas in Upper Egypt saw an increase of 5.8 percent for the same period.
On a more positive note, the same studies indicate that the total number of employed Egyptians reached 22.8 million in this year’s third quarter, including 18.3 million males and 4.5 million females. CAPMAS further noted that employment rates were higher in rural than urban areas, with 13.4 million people currently finding employment in the former.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
