The demographics of the Middle East and North Africa are consistently given as trigger issues for change/revolution. The argument, as I'm sure you know, is that large numbers of young people, better educated than their parents, but facing near inevitable unemployment are a threat to stability. Quite a few international organizations have called it a social time bomb. None of this is new and regimes in the region have been told for more than a decade to do something about it or face disturbances. The current situation is that nearly nothing has been done and the Middle East and North Africa continue to have the highest youth unemployment in the world and getting worse.
Egypt could be the worst of the worst with young people being disproportionately unemployed at 80% of total unemployment. This is several times higher than for the next worst MENA country. I find this figure hard to believe because, if true, the house would already have been torched
Being a young graduate is a double liability with graduate unemployment several times higher than unskilled unemployment in countries such as Turkey (2 to 4 times higher) and also likely similar in Egypt.
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stori ... ended.html
My memory was that photographs of the January 2011 demonstrations showed an overwhelming number of young, and frequently middle class (if their clothing was anything to go by) demonstrators. Where did they go or, more importantly, which party is out there trying to get them involved in politics as an alternative to alienation.
Its an aside but it shows how the employed ‘steal’ jobs from the unemployed. In Egypt the World Economic Forum claims that public sector salaries are up to 48% higher than for comparable salaries in the Egyptian private sector, Expanding the public sector is therefore a much more expensive way of creating jobs for young people. On the other hand Just bringing the public sector in line with the private sector would reduce the public sector wages bill by a staggering 50% and release resources for education and job creation in the private sector. The Egyptian public service is not only salary bloated but is size bloated at 70% of total non-agricultural employment in Egypt. Is there anyone other than farmers who does not work for the government? Double bloating of the public sector is a tried and true way used by dictator types to secure loyalty and gain control over the population but its not very good at generating wealth and all but guarantees difficulty for the private sector in attracting good staff to help grow the economy.
I know the argument that young people hold out for public sector employment and see it as high status. That attitude could be easily be fixed by large scale redundancies, the removal of tenure and new market based pay scales for new entrants.
http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_YouthE ... t_2012.pdf
