Policy Research Reports
The Promise of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Jobs in Egypt
No.
SPRR 2023-3
Publisher
ERF and GIZ
Date
June, 2023
This report examines the growth of ICT jobs in Egypt, where ICT jobs are defined as (1) ICT occupations in ICT industries, (2) Non-ICT occupations in ICT industries, and (3) ICT occupations in non-ICT industries. The analysis uses microdata from nationally-representative annual waves of the official Labour Force Survey (LFS) from 2009 to 2021 complemented by insights from interviews with 17 experts and key informants. The findings of this report are the following. First, although ICT employment makes up a small share of total employment, it grew rapidly between 2009 and 2021, three times as fast as the average annual growth rate of non-ICT jobs. Second, women’s employment in ICT jobs expanded whereas it contracted in non-ICT jobs, underscoring the promising role of ICT jobs in providing opportunities for women in an otherwise inhospitable private sector labour market. Third, ICT jobs recruit increasingly more tertiary educated workers than non-ICT jobs, and the proportion of workers with technical secondary education fell over time. Fifth, data entry, receptionists, call centres and operators, followed by technical assistants and sales represent the largest two occupations in ICT employment, and the fastest growing over time. Sixth, the characteristics of ICT jobs are at stake, with declining real wages and stalling social insurance coverage rates for men and falling ones for women, indicating potential struggles in the patterns ICT job creation.
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
Irène Selwaness
Associate Professor, Faculty of Economics and Political...
Research Fellows
Ragui Assaad
Professor and Freeman Chair for International Economic...
Authors
Mona El-Sayed
Assistant Lecturer, Economics Department, Faculty of Economics...