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Highlights from the E4E needs assessment studies of the priority countries
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Economic/ Labor market overview:

 - The largest components of the country’s GDP include services, manufacturing, oil & gas, and trade & finance. Meanwhile, growth sectors include: tourism, ITC, construction, and natural gas
- Over 5-% of the Egyptian population is younger than 29 and of this only 61% of males and 13% of females participate in labour force.
- Despite such relatively low participation rates, 1 in 4 youth are unemployed; for women it is 2 in 5.
- One potential release valve is mobility of Egyptian labour abroad.
- More than 28% of male youth express an intention to migrate; 69% to Arab Gulf countries.
- Unemployment and education are negatively correlated - highest for technical secondary and university graduates.
- 75% of youth work in private sector where 80% of them are informal; 72% would rather work in public sector.
 
Implications for the education and training sectors:
 
- In Egypt, there are about 1.5 million students completing basic education each year. Of these 650,000 (about 40%) make it to post-secondary education, including 400,000 (about 28%) who enter university
- There is high demand for  developing more up to date and technical skills that are relevant to market needs:
- Potentially focused on basic tangible skills in key growth sectors 
- Need to reduce the stigma with post-secondary technical educational paths – and improve their quality
- Graduates spend a long time to find employment as cultural stigma is associated with taking lower skilled jobs 
- For university level, complaints include: out of date curricula, too theoretical, no soft-skills or cross-functional skills, and little work readiness
- Need for entrepreneurship training and scaling of  Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).
 
Some insights on sectors of growth:
 
- Egypt is expected to generate 7 million jobs over the next 10 years, 1.5 million from two priority sectors: construction and tourism: 
 
Construction: 
 
- Currently accounts for 8% of total employment (1.8 million jobs) and has been increasing at a strong pace of 100,000 per year. The construction sector is a fast growing sector which gives the private sector the opportunity to lead the development. As several regional countries, especially Libya, who are going through reconstruction, are in need of construction professionals and Egypt being a natural supplier of such labor, employers however are not finding the level of professionalism that they need.
 
Tourism: 
 
- Accounts for 7.5% of total GDP or $14 billion. The sector’s contribution is expected to be more than $30 billion by 2020; this will result in the creation of more than 800,000 jobs in the next 10 years.
 
Manufacturing: 
 
- Manufacturing was one of the fastest growing employers; with the highest value add in the economy.
- The sector currently employs ~2.6 million employees of which ~1 million are in food industries and ~300,000 are in chemicals industries
- There is a potential need for ~250,000 additional jobs by 2015 as industry growth returns to pre-revolution forecasts.
 
ICT/BPO:
 
- Egypt’s Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services’ revenue is USD 1.5 billion in 2010
- There is a potential need for ~250,000 additional jobs by 2015 due to expected industry growth 
- Several initiatives are underway to enhance talent pool
for the ITO and BPO sector.
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