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Rabat – The Moroccan economy has lost 280,000 jobs over a period of one year, with 267,000 jobs unpaid and 13,000 paid, indicate the latest statistics released by Morocco’s Higher Commission of Planning (HCP) concerning the labor market for the first quarter of 2023.
This loss is due to a drop in the number of jobs: 229,000 in rural areas and 51,000 in urban areas.
The construction industry witnessed the creation of 28,000 jobs with a contrastive loss of 247,000 jobs in “agriculture, forestry, and fishing” and 56,000 in “services.”
Again, following the creation of 28,000 jobs in industrial activities, the industry sector lost 10,000 jobs, while craft and similar activities lost 38,000 jobs.
In population terms, there has been an increase of 83,000 people: 67,000 in urban areas and 16,000 in rural areas. The unemployment volume reached 1,549,000 people at the national scale, in contrast with 1,466,000 during the same period in 2022.
According to HCP, the unemployment rate surged from 12.1% to 12.9% at the national scale: from 16.3% to 17.1% in urban areas and from 5.1% to 5.7% in rural areas.
Read also: Morocco’s Unemployment Rate Projected to Reach 10.7% in 2023
This “striking” rate remains higher among young people aged 15 to 24 (35.3%), graduates (19.8%) and women (18.1%), HCP documented, adding that, nationwide, barely 15.5% of women have a job.
Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) World Economic Outlook projected Morocco’s unemployment rate to average 10.7% throughout 2023, a slight decline compared to 11.8% at the end of 2022.
Meanwhile, the Moroccan economy lost hundreds of thousands of jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the IMF’s report expected employment to recover in the North African country after the crisis.
