Morocco's Official Employment Rate Reached 39.7% in 2021

Rabat – Morocco’s High Commission for Planning (HCP) has reported that the official employment rate in the country stood at 39.7% in 2021, recording a slight increase from 2020, 39.4%, and a drop from 2019, 41.6%. This rate does not include the undocumented informal sector.

The 2021 employment rate marked a slight decrease in urban areas – from 35.3% to 35.1%– when recording an increase in rural areas – from 47% to 48.4%, according to HCP’s March 1 report.

For youth aged 15-29 years old, the employment rate remains stable at 25.4% between 2020 and 2021 compared to 28.2% in 2019. For the employment rate among Moroccans aged 30-44 years old, the commission noted a drop from 56.8% in 2019 to 54.8% in 2021.

As for the distribution of active labor among sectors, the service sector comes first with 45.8%, followed by agriculture, forestry, and fishing (31.2%), industry sector (11.7%), and construction (11.2%).

HCP concluded that 4.93 million Moroccans work in the service sector, 3.36 million in agriculture, forestry, and fishing, 1.26 million in the industry sector, and 1.21 million in construction work.

Among the service workers, 33.5% of them are in the trade branch, 12.5% in social services, and 11.8% in transport, warehouses, and communications, HCP added.

In addition to distribution based on sector, the commission conducted a division of labor based on the mode of employment. It discovered that 51.8% of workers are employees ahead of self-employed (29.6%), caregivers (13.7%), and employers (2.2%).

By comparison to 2020, the percentage of employees and employers grew by 1.1% and 0.2% when the percentage of caregivers stabilized at 13.7%, and the percentage of self-employed dropped from 30.9%.

As for most practiced professions in Morocco, there are crafting (19.1%), agriculture and fishing (19%), and jobs not related to agriculture (16.6%).

While Morocco’s employment rate increased between 2020 and 2021, it remains under pre-COVID-19 levels since the country’s economy is gradually rebounding from the severe consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As women’s participation in work sectors slightly increased in the past year, the main issues burdening the development of the Moroccan economy remain to be low female participation in the labor market, lack of relevant professional training, and dominance of the informal economy.