Hi MENA’s Unemployment: The Facts!.
Social initiative Silatech and innovation laboratory Visualizing Impact released an infographic about the state of unemployment in the MENA-region. They found that 28% of the MENA-region’s 15 – 28-year-olds are unemployed, which means that 7 million young Arabs get delayed in the job market.
If the number of unemployed Arab youths is halved, the region’s Gross Domestic Product can increase by $25 billion by 2018, according to the International Labor Organization.
Silatech’s CEO Tarek Youssef stated that unemployment hinders young people from getting married and having a family, which obstructs their capability to contribute to and build their community. “The anger and frustration we see in the news these days has its roots in the depression these young people feel due to lack of hope,” he adds.
In Egypt, getting married costs 11 times a single person’s household annual expenses – in other words, it is much cheaper to stay single and live alone. On average, a groom-to-be is asked to spend what is equivalent to his two-year-salary to pay for the wedding and marriage in Egypt, of which he usually pays 40%. His family and the bride’s family each contribute with 30%.
The independence age in the MENA-region for women (24 years) is close to the global average, however, the age for males lies at 29, the eldest in comparison to East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and South America & the Carribean.
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