The unemployment rate in Morocco declined over the past year, reaching 11.6 percent, despite the slowdown in economic growth, the continuing repercussions of the war in Ukraine, and the effects of the severe dry season that the country experienced.
The unemployment rate declined during the past year by 0.7 percent, compared to 2021, when this rate reached 12.3 percent, but it has not yet reached pre-pandemic levels, as it was 9.2 percent in 2019.
However, despite this positive trend, the newspaper “EconomistA specialist in economic affairs in Morocco, that the recorded decline is not due to the performance of the economy during the past year, but is explained by “the decline of the active population (of working age).”
The French-language newspaper highlighted that the decrease in the activity rate during the past year is behind the decline in the unemployment rate, explaining that the exact level of this rate will be revealed in the coming weeks, with the publication of the detailed figures for employment and unemployment for the year 2022 by official institutions.
The data of the High Commissioner for Planning (a public institution specialized in statistics) indicated, in a note to it, that the new positions in the services sector during the past year will compensate for their lost counterparts in the construction and agricultural sectors. They are the two sectors most affected by the country’s climatic and economic conditions.
According to the delegation supervising the statistical data, more than a quarter of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 years (26 percent / 1.5 million young people) in Morocco do not work, study, or follow any training, 73.4 percent of them are girls, of whom 41.3 percent are married.
The source recorded in the figures presented on the occasion of International Youth Day, last August, that the category of youth between the ages of 15 and 24 years reaches 5.9 million people, of whom 16.3 percent are active and employed (962 thousand), and 7.6 percent are unemployed. (448 thousand), while 76.1 percent of them are outside the labor market (4 million and 478 thousand, including students, students and housewives).