Youth labor market vulnerabilities: evidence from Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia
International Journal of Manpower
ISSN: 0143-7720
Article publication date: 26 January 2022
Issue publication date: 13 December 2022
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prevalence and drivers of employment vulnerability among youth in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia, and their propensity to transition to better jobs over time.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis is based on longitudinal data from Labor Market Panel Surveys spanning 6–20 years. The authors use transition matrices to examine the prevalence of transitions between labor market statuses for the same individuals over time, distinguishing between youth and non-youth, and men and women, as well as multinomial logistic regressions that control for individual and family background, including previous labor market status, family wealth and parental education.
Findings
The paper finds that youth in all three countries were disadvantaged in terms of labor market outcomes with most young men in particular ending up in vulnerable jobs while women of all ages were most likely to exit the labor market all together, unless they had formal jobs. Moreover, youth who started out in the labor market in a vulnerable job were unlikely to move to a better-quality job over time. Family wealth, parental education and father's occupation were found to be important determinants of labor market outcomes and vulnerability, even after a long period of work experience.
Social implications
The paper finds that wealth effects, parental education and occupation effects follow workers throughout their careers, implying low equality of opportunity and inter-generational and lifetime mobility.
Originality/value
The findings indicate worsening labor market outcomes over time, heavily influenced by family background. High levels of vulnerable employment persistence, regardless of skill and experience, reinforce the importance of initial labor market outcome on the quality of lifetime employment prospects.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Ragui Assaad, Meltem Tayfur, Francesco Pastore, four anonymous referees and participants at the ERF Annual Meeting, Kuwait, March 2019, the Middle East Economics Association Annual Conference in Philadelphia, USA, January 2019 and the UNU-WIDER “Transforming Informal Work and Livelihoods” workshop November 2020, for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper.
Funding: The authors received financial support for the research from the United Nations University- Wider “Transforming informal work and livelihoods” project.
Conflict of interest: The authors are not aware of any conflict of interest.
Citation
Alazzawi, S. and Hlasny, V. (2022), "Youth labor market vulnerabilities: evidence from Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia", International Journal of Manpower, Vol. 43 No. 7, pp. 1670-1699. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-04-2021-0239
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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