Political Revolt and Youth Unemployment in Tunisia

Schaefer, Isabel

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-65085-2

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…A growing literature has investigated the STWT in the MENA region (Amer, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019; Amer and Atallah, 2019; Assaad and Krafft, 2016, 2021; Assaad et al. , 2019b; Schaefer, 2018; Yassine, 2015). These studies found that youth are facing increasingly more difficult transitions to good jobs and formal employment, and long periods of unemployment associated with rising education levels combined with skills mismatch relative to the characteristics demanded by employers.…”

Section: Related Literature and Country Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Youth labor market vulnerabilities: evidence from Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia

AlAzzawi

Hlásny

2022

IJM

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PurposeThe 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/approachThe 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.FindingsThe 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 implicationsThe 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/valueThe 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.

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Section: Related Literature and Country Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Youth labor market vulnerabilities: evidence from Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia

AlAzzawi

Hlásny

2022

IJM

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“…In Tunisia, in contrast to other MENA countries, Baah‐Boateng (2016) identified an exceptionally high youth unemployment rate, and at the same time a modest rate of employment informality and working poverty. Schäfer (2017) highlighted the mismatch between workers' academic skills and firms' needs, and the pervasiveness of irregular or seasonal jobs in services and construction demanding more of craftsmanship and vocational skills. Ben Cheikh and Moisseron (2020) studied the incentives of informal workers to remain informal or transition to formal jobs with social security protection, and found that high contribution rates to social security schemes disincentivised them from seeking job‐related social protection.…”

Section: Existing Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Fostering decent jobs, formalising informal employment and spurring job mobility in MENA countries

Adair,

AlAzzawi,

Hlasny

2024

Economic Notes

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Longstanding evidence in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries shows a high prevalence of unemployment and informality among a large fraction of population, and at the same time gender disparities in labour force participation and occupational mobility. Why is there such persistent labour‐market segmentation? What is the impact and potential of various formalisation policies? An overview of the informal economy across three middle‐income MENA countries (Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia) is provided with respect to taxonomy, coverage and drivers. Transition matrices and multinomial logistic regressions are applied to longitudinal microdata from Labour‐Market Panel Surveys, focusing on workers' occupational mobility in relation to their previous status, age cohort, gender and other demographics. Persistent segmentation and low occupational mobility in all countries suggest that informal employment is not driven by choice on the labour supply side but by structural constraints on the demand side. Existing formalisation policies based on distinct stick and carrot strategies, and targeting of existing businesses and workers achieve rather modest impacts. One recommendation to supplement policies for decent jobs creation is to promote social and solidarity enterprises and extend microfinance to informal enterprises.

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“…Despite years of neoliberal economic reforms and the financial strains that have rendered these social contracts unsustainable, unemployed university graduates across many MENA countries continue to hold the state responsible for providing them with public-sector jobs (Badimon and Bogaert 2014). In terms of the consequences of unemployment, important debate surrounds the relationship between youth unemployment and the Arab uprisings (Hoffman and Jamal 2012;Sayre 2016;Schaefer 2018). Some scholars have pointed to youth unemployment, especially among the educated (Campante and Chor 2012; Sayre 2016), as a key factor in protest mobilization.…”

Section: Labor Market Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction to a Special Issue on Labor in the Middle East and North Africa: Precarity, Inequality, and Migration

Bishara

2023

ILR Review

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Despite its political and strategic importance, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has been largely absent from cross-regional comparative treatments of industrial and labor relations. This special issue builds on a rich, multidisciplinary, and methodologically diverse body of research on labor and employment in the MENA, bringing together a collection of cutting-edge work in this field. The goal is to bring the study of the MENA into conversation with international and comparative scholarship on industrial and labor relations and to encourage more systematic inclusion of the MENA in comparative work. Drawing on research on Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Israel, and the Gulf states, contributors to this special issue advance comparative scholarship on migration, labor market outcomes, worker agency, and the relationship between unions and precarious workers. This introductory essay situates these contributions in the context of three bodies of research in the study of labor in the MENA: resistance and contentious activism, labor market challenges, and migration.

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Political Revolt and Youth Unemployment in Tunisia

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Youth labor market vulnerabilities: evidence from Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia

Youth labor market vulnerabilities: evidence from Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia

Fostering decent jobs, formalising informal employment and spurring job mobility in MENA countries

Introduction to a Special Issue on Labor in the Middle East and North Africa: Precarity, Inequality, and Migration

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