Deregulation of the economy and the labour market Between 1975 and 1999,
Egypt’s rate of unemployment increased from 2.5 per cent to more than ten
times that figure (ILO 2001; World Bank 2001: 278; Ministry of Information
2001a). The latter source states that the total number of employed persons
in the country was 17.434 million in 1999/2000. According to the World
Development Report 2000/2001, the labour force in Egypt was 24 million in
1999 (World Bank 2001: 278). This means that the employment/labour force
ratio was 72.6 per cent, so the unemployment rate was 27.4 per cent in that
year. As the issue of unemployment was hotly politicized by the opposition,
the government discarded the standard definition ratified by international
conventions and calculated the unemployment rate down to 8 per cent in
2000/01 (Ministry of Information 2002a). According to a study by R. Assaad
of the University of Minnesota, only one-third of new entrants to the labour
market in 1998 found employment (Farag 2000). The desperate situation of the
labour market was exacerbated by the application of the Structural Adjustment
Programmes, intended, among other things, to privatize parts of the public
sector and eliminate redundancy in the civil service. The implementation of
both policies resulted in large numbers of employees losing their jobs. It was
estimated that in the year 2000 the civil service required only 1.2 million of the
5.9 million persons actually employed in it (Kazim 2001; Internet 2001b).
Although reform is direly needed in the public sector, short- and medium-
term measures have to be taken to solve the problems of the reform
victims.