The Arab young and restless

Editorial, Normal
Source:

The National – Monday, April 4, 2011

By JEFFREY D. SACHS
MANY factors underlay the ongoing upheavals in the Middle East.
Decades of corrupt and authoritarian rule, increasingly literate and digitally-connected societies and skyrocketing world food prices.
To top it off, throughout the Middle East (as well as Sub-Saharan Africa and most of South Asia), rapid population growth is fuelling enormous demographic pressures.
Egypt’s population, for example, more than doubled over the course of Hosni Mubarak’s rule, from 42 million in 1980 to 85 million last year.
This surge is all the more remarkable given that Egypt is a desert country, its inhabitants packed along the Nile. With no room to spread , population densities are rising to breaking point.
Cairo has become a sprawling region of some 20 million people living cheek-by-jowl with inadequate infrastructure.
Rapid population growth means a bulging youth population.
Indeed, half of Egypt’s population is under 25.
Egypt is facing the extreme – and largely unmet – challenge of ensuring productive and gainful employment for its young people.
Employment growth is not keeping up with this population surge, at least not in the sense of decent jobs with decent wages.
The unemployment rate for young people (15-24 years old) in North Africa and the Middle East is 30% or more.
The frustration of unemployed and under-employed youth is now spilling over into the streets.
The problem of high youth unemployment is certainly not confined to the developing world.
In the US, the overall unemployment rate is around 9%, but among 18-25 year olds, it is a staggering 19%. And, this includes only young people actually at work or looking for work.
Many more have become discouraged and dropped out of the labour force entirely: not at school, not at work and not looking for work. They do not protest much, but many end up in prison.
The world’s labour markets are now interconnected.
Young people in countries as diverse as Egypt and the US are competing with young Chinese and Indians for jobs.
China’s low-paid, reasonably productive manufacturing workers and high-quality infrastructure (roads, power, ports, and communications) has set the standard for competitiveness globally.
As a result, low-skilled workers in Egypt, the US and other countries must either raise their productivity enough to compete at a decent wage or accept low pay or outright unemployment.
So, creating jobs at decent wages is at the heart of being internationally competitive.
That requires equipping workers with a good education, strong on-the-job training and supportive infrastructure.
While the private sector must create most of the jobs, the public sector must create the underlying conditions for high productivity.
That is a tall order.
Only one high-income region has done a reasonably good job of preparing its youth, and its overall economy, for tough global competition: Northern Europe, including Germany and Scandinavia (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden). In these countries, public education is excellent and the transition from school to work often involves programmes like the apprenticeships for which Germany is especially famous.
In developing countries, the main advances are found in countries that emphasise excellence in education, public investment in infrastructure and serious on-the-job training.  – Project Syndicate

 

 

*Jeffrey D. Sachs is professor of economics and director of the earth institute at Columbia University. He is also special adviser to the United Nations secretary-general on the millennium development goals.