Policy Research Reports
Growing and Shrinking Occupations and the Demand for Skills in Egypt
No.
SPRR 2023-5
Publisher
ERF and GIZ
Date
June, 2023
Lately there are certain global trends that are shaping the future of work. While global data that discusses growing and shrinking occupations does exist, there is a gap on the Egyptian national level. Accordingly, this report seeks to provide policymakers, employers, and employees with needed information to make evidence-based decisions and navigate the future of work. The report adopts a mixed method approach and uses nationally representative surveys of the Egyptian labour market to analyze growing and shrinking occupations.
Ultimately, this report provides an overview of growing and shrinking jobs in the Egyptian labour market. Firstly, it examines growing occupations in terms of employment and real wage growth. Moreover, the analysis explores jobs' skill requirements, as well as skills acquisition methods. It is seen that occupations with fast employment growth tend to have more wage growth. Some occupations were shrinking due to the evolving nature of several industries, following progressing technological advancement. Additionally, workers reported that some jobs (52% in 2012) do not require formal education and that they are often over-educated for their jobs. The most required skill is physical fitness, followed by literacy and numeracy skills, with needed skills varying by industry. Less educated workers mainly learn skills on the job, whereas more educated workers rely more on education and training.
There has been an increase in the role of automation in labour; where technological advancements created a gap for needed skills between the supply and demand in the labour force; and that state policies have led to growth in certain sectors due to the state’s encouragement of employers to invest in those sectors.
Key recommendations are outlined for policymakers to consider when creating legislation or adopting policies for growing and shrinking occupations include: promoting internet access and enhancing digital skills of the labour force, in addition to the need to equip students with basic and soft skills (reading and writing, math, and soft skills (such as teamwork, customer service, and communication); this focus applies not only to primary education but also to preparatory and secondary education. As a result of earlier waves of technological advancements which led to the shrinking of some occupations, reskilling programmes for workers transitioning from those occupations need to be developed. to account for global trends, specifically, technological advancements and automation; and taking into consideration Egypt’s number of unskilled labour and the country’s reliance on labour intensive technology when viewing automation and/or automatable jobs.
This Special Policy Research Report is an output of a project between the Economic Research Forum (ERF) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on Employment Promotion. It aims to support the generation of information about the current and future demands of the Egyptian labour market and equipping relevant partners with high quality evidence which would support them in making labour market-oriented decisions. As such, the project collaborated with ERF to produce sound research findings that aimed to address several topics related to the future of work, published during the national forums on the future of work in Egypt.
Research Fellows
Rana Hendy
Assistant Professor of Economics and Director of...
Research Associates
Rasha Hassan
Research Consultant