Modelling Unemployment in the Presence of Excess Labour Supply - An Application to Egypt

Journal of Economics and Econometrics, Vol. 54, No. 2, pp. 58-92, 2011

35 Pages Posted: 31 May 2011 Last revised: 15 Dec 2011

Date Written: December 7, 2011

Abstract

The demographic structure of Egypt has the form of a pyramid, indicating that labour supply will grow at a relatively high rate for many years to come. Unless emigration flows will rise, Egypt needs to create jobs at a much higher pace than most other countries around the globe to absorb the new entrants at the domestic labour market. Adding to this is the currently high share of 30-40% of the Egyptian employees working in the rather inefficient public sector. In order to quantify future developments at the labour market, this paper presents a labour supply model to analyse the impact of the ongoing demographic supply shocks on unemployment, public finances and welfare in Egypt. The findings indicate that the demographic labour supply will increase unemployment in the short term as the Egyptian labour market will not be able to absorb the demographic labour supply, unless the Egyptian economy grows steadily at least at 5% for many years in a row. In the long term, the employment dividend can be reaped by productivity growth increases if the labour market starts functioning. The findings also point out that, for growth to accelerate rapidly, job creation should occur in the private and not in the public sector. The large public sector has been driving up government expenditures disproportionably, not only because of the existence of the high number of people employed in the public sector but also because of excessive public wage increases.

Keywords: demographics, labour supply, employment, greening, public sector employment, public finance

JEL Classification: C32, J11, J21, J22, J23

Suggested Citation

Peeters, Marga, Modelling Unemployment in the Presence of Excess Labour Supply - An Application to Egypt (December 7, 2011). Journal of Economics and Econometrics, Vol. 54, No. 2, pp. 58-92, 2011 , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1617205

Marga Peeters (Contact Author)

De Nederlandsche Bank ( email )

PO Box 98
1000 AB Amsterdam
Amsterdam, 1000 AB
Netherlands

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