Labour Market Outcomes and Egypt’s Migration Potential

Will the radical political changes Egypt has gone through since early 2011 have an impact on emigration from the country? This all depends on young Egyptian adults, who are the potential migrants of tomorrow. In order to understand the consequences of the Egyptian revolution might for migration, a questionnaire survey was conducted amongst Egyptian youth in 2013. The objective of this paper is to analyse the Egyptian labour market together with Egyptian migration to see whether changing conditions in the labour market, in particular after the revolution of 25 January 2011, may affect migration. This study is divided into three parts. The first analyses recent trends – from 2007 to 2011 – of the labour market and in particular the evolution of the labour force in terms of participation rate and unemployment rate according to gender, age group and educational level. The second part outlines the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of Egyptian migrants, in general, and according to region of migration (Gulf Cooperation Countries and other Arab countries as opposed to OECD countries). It also presents an analysis of unemployment against the education and skill levels of Egyptian migrants. Finally, the last part presents the findings of a survey on orientation towards migration of Egyptian youth. This survey was designed by the Migration Policy Centre and was conducted through phone interviews by the Egyptian Centre for Public Opinion Research (Baseera) in 2013.