A survey by the Arab League’s Young Arabs Forum said 65 percent of the sample believed that unemployment was the most important challenge facing Arab youth.
The forum, which is meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday, called for implementing its comprehensive program for reducing unemployment in the Arab states, in collaboration with the Arab Labor Organization (ALO).
An ALO report said the Arab world’s population in 2007 reached 310 million, with a labor force of 115 million. The Arab world’s 25 million unemployed constitute 21.7 percent of the total population.
According to the report, youth constituted 53 percent of the total unemployment rate in all Arab states.
Recorded unemployment rates were 2 percent in UAE and Bahrain, 3 percent in Qatar, 7 percent in Saudi Arabia and Oman, 11 percent in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, 13 percent in Jordan, 14 percent in Tunisia and Morocco, 17 percent in Sudan and Yemen, and 30 percent in Iraq, Algeria and the Palestinian Territories.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
