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The Arab region is home to the highest rates The unemployment Among the world’s youth, it needs to provide more than 33.3 million job opportunities by 2030, in order to be able to absorb the large number of young people entering the labor market every year.
To achieve this, Arab countries need a radical change in their current education systems and curricula, which are not compatible with the evolving labor market and its changing nature.
This includes strengthening education systems, including education, skills training and technical and vocational education, strengthening links between learning and the labor market, strengthening policies and exploring opportunities with the private sector to create jobs and support leading businesses Among young people, according to what the organization reported UNICEF Which confirmed that current education curricula in the Arab region do not provide young people with sufficient skills to achieve success in today’s economy.
The region’s youth unemployment rate is almost double the global average, and has grown 2.5 times faster than the global average. According to a United Nations survey, the Arab region recorded an unemployment rate of 12% in 2022, which is the highest in the world.
Unemployment levels have continued to rise since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among Arab youth, and Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Sudan, and Tunisia are likely to face challenges arising from the weak global economy.
The demographic profile of youth in the Arab region means that more young people enter the labor market every year with increasingly weak job opportunities, according to researcher Basma Al-Momani in a report published by the Carnegie Foundation.
On the ground, opinion polls show that Arab youth are among the most frustrated groups regarding the political and economic conditions in their countries, and they often think about emigrating to their homelands in search of better opportunities and a decent life that their countries have been unable to provide for them.
Several factors contribute to the high unemployment rates in Arab countries.
Education systems that are not compatible with the labor market
The education systems currently in place in most Arab countries are not compatible with the evolving labor market and its changing nature. They do not provide young people with sufficient skills that are critical to achieving success in today’s economy, which is primarily a knowledge economy, according to what the Carnegie Middle East Center stated in a research paper. A number of specialists participated in it.
The study noted that “Arab governments still view education reform as a top-down effort that continues to perpetuate power relations and authoritarian thinking, leading to the marginalization of critical and creative thinking among students.”
The new skills required include: communication, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and the ability to deal with the demands of automation taking place in the world and its various challenges. According to a study by the World Economic Forum, the rate of dependence on machines for all types of jobs will rise to 52% by 2025.
The study found that half of workers who retain their roles in the next five years will have to learn new skills, indicating that by 2025 employers will divide their work equally between humans and machines.
Demand will increase for workers who can fill jobs related to the green economy, cutting-edge data jobs, artificial intelligence, and fill new roles in engineering, cloud computing, and product development and management.
The study indicates a major deficiency in Arab schools and universities in adopting and teaching these new specializations, and providing students with the basic and advanced skills needed by the global labor market.
The corruption dilemma
The international corruption watchdog has released the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index, which reviews the performance record on transparency and anti-corruption in 180 countries around the world.
The majority of Arab countries declined in their ranking, as the region’s average fell to a new low of 38 out of 100 on a scale in which a score of zero indicates a highly corrupt country.
Syria occupied first place in the Arab world in the ranking of the most corrupt countries in the region, followed by Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Kuwait, the Sultanate of Oman, Bahrain and Jordan, respectively, while the countries of the Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia recorded the best rates in combating corruption among the countries of the region, according to what was mentioned. Al-Monitor website.
Arab countries realize that corruption constitutes the greatest obstacle to achieving development, and is like an epidemic that costs their economy billions of dollars annually in the absence of a serious political will for change and reform, and effective participation from civil society and the media, which exacerbates political instability in the region and hinders its social and economic development, according to What Al Jazeera Net mentioned in its previous report.
Despite this, the situation of many Arab countries has not changed for decades, and the title of combating corruption and holding the corrupt accountable has remained a slogan raised by successive governments, without succeeding in establishing effective mechanisms to prevent the spread of corruption in many sectors.
Centralized economics
Most Arab countries adopted a state-led development path in the 1960s and 1970s, and since then, Arab governments have become major employers of the workforce, which ultimately led to the creation of flabby government agencies, with no capacity to absorb the large numbers of young people entering the country. market every year.
This trajectory has led to higher rates of youth unemployment, lower skills, and longer waiting times between graduation and obtaining a first public sector job.
This approach also led to a lack of flexibility in the labor market, which relies on the state as the central employer, and a decrease in the role played by the private sector in combating unemployment, which exacerbated the problem.
Non-oil Arab countries need to increase job opportunities to accommodate the unemployed and new entrants to the labor force market, and the fact that youth unemployment has remained high for a long period indicates that the problem is largely structural, and its solution requires high and sustainable growth capable of creating job opportunities, with the support of… A sound economic environment away from corruption and central state control, and stimulating the private sector. Achieving this goal also requires a comprehensive reconsideration of the educational curricula and methods used, and the introduction of specializations that keep pace with the spirit of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and take into account the new challenges it poses.
