Industry fails to attract jobs
Growth is disconnected from employment! This is the finding of a joint study by the World Bank and the Moroccan High Commissioner’s Office for Planning (HCP). Presented during a webinar held on Monday, February 14, the study on «Morocco’s Employment Sector: Identifying Obstacles to an Inclusive Labor Market» explains that due to incomplete structural transformation and a complex business environment, the labor market is characterized by low participation, persistent unemployment, low-quality jobs, and the exclusion of certain groups. Ahmed Lahlimi, High Commissioner for Planning, said that «Employment is a complex issue. It is a long-term issue that is solved over a certain period of time.
Today, one of the challenges consist in succeeding and accelerating the transformation especially since the jobs created do not keep up with the increase in the working population: the deficit is estimated at 300,000 jobs on average each year. Until now, the structural transformation of Morocco has been slow. «There have been job losses in agriculture, but little job creation in manufacturing, which is a harbinger to «premature deindustrialization», the report notes. Only a small portion of the workers released from the agricultural sector were absorbed by the industrial sector. At the same time, the share of services has been slowly increasing and many workers remain in the informal services. Structural transformation has also suffered from poor private sector job creation. The accumulation of public capital and a difficult business environment for enterprises have limited their contribution to job-creating growth. Businesses face costly access to land, a complex tax system, lack of skilled labor and training programs, and insufficient access to finance… «The decline in the number of jobs, combined with the growth of the labor force and a persistent informal sector, has led to increased inactivity and persistent unemployment».
The other challenge is to get more young people into the labor market. Especially since 29% of people aged 15 to 24 are considered to be «Not in Education, Employment or Training» (NEET). Yet prolonged inactivity leads to long-term unemployment. «NEET» status is surprisingly «persistent»: people who were not in school, employed, or undergoing training in 2010 were still not in school, employed, or undergoing training 10 years later. This long-term result is a major impediment to an employment-oriented growth strategy», the study points out.
Among the NEETs, gender disparities are another problem. More women than men are NEET.
Morocco is one of the very few countries where female labor force participation rate (FLFPR) has declined since 2005, while average FLFPR rates have increased worldwide between 2000 and 2019.
Khadija MASMOUDI
