IMF warns: Middle East Jobs Crisis Risks Fuelling Unrest

[ThunderBlade + 231]

The Middle East and north Africa must accelerate economic reforms and tackle an unemployment crisis among women and young people that risks fuelling wider unrest across the region, the International Monetary Fund has warned. In a report published on Thursday, the fund highlighted the vast gender gap in the regional workforce. If this was narrowed “from triple to double the average for other emerging markets and developing economies”, the region’s economic growth could have doubled in the past decade, gaining $1tn in cumulative output, it said. But labour market “outcomes” had not changed markedly in the past 15 years, according to the IMF. The region’s youth unemployment, the highest in the world at about 25 per cent, had “worsened significantly” since 2010 — the year before popular uprisings triggered upheaval across the Arab world.  Youth joblessness in eight countries is already more than 30 per cent, including in Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s biggest economy, and Egypt, its most populous. The situation is particularly intractable for women, who face cultural, legal and social barriers to working. Women in the region are three times less likely than men to be in the labour force, while the level of joblessness among young women is nearly 36 per cent, rising to 62 per cent in Saudi Arabia, the IMF said.
 

[franco + 96]

It's a classic and traditional model of colonization, poor education and backwardness....
 

[jpZelabal + 63]

I believe that in villages (and many cities) across the ME there are no job opportunities...Just pure slavery.

[damirUSBiH + 327]

Majority of workers leaving Saudi Arabia are from South Asia and work in the construction industry

http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/Thousands-foreign-workers-leave-Saudi-Arabia-540960446

 

[Pavel + 384]

Saudis won't tolerate being treated badly which is what they were doing to poor migrant workers, treating them like slaves. They were bullied, harassed, not paid for weeks, left to rot in the heat! Disgracefully...
 

[pinto + 293]

Key word - reforms. Investment in people (especially education) in national infrastructure and essential public services and in job creation to achieve economic stability can be and should be applied globally...