Jobs in the Middle East North Africa, and the Moroccan case

One cannot speak of a common jobs problem across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The countries at war – Syria, Yemen, Libya – are, of course, a story of themselves. Some countries not at war, notably Lebanon and Jordan, have seen huge inflows of refugees that have created large downward pressures on wages, especially in the low-skilled informal sector (Dadush & Niebuhr 2016). The remaining countries can be divided into two main groups. The energy importers such as Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia, have been unable to create sufficient jobs, especially for the young, and are the source of large diasporas. Officially, emigrants are 4-8% of the population and one can probably double that number if undocumented emigrants and the offspring born abroad are included. In contrast, the energy exporters such as Saudi Arabia have generated jobs in excess of their effective labor supply, have little emigration, and attracted foreign workers and their families which add up to some 30% to their native population. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar, oil exporters whose native population is much smaller than that of Saudi Arabia, have foreign born populations that represent as much as 80% of the total.