When having a job is not enough: poor-quality employment in Egypt, 1988 – 2018

In developing countries, governments are rightly concerned with generating enough jobs. However, focusing solely on the quantity delivers a partial picture, as socioeconomic sustainability and productivity also depend on job quality. This paper shows that although Egypt has experienced reasonable economic growth between 1998 and 2018, labour force participation declined and job quality appears to have worsened. Based on several Latin American case studies, this paper uses the Alkire/Foster method to measure poor-quality employment among wage-earners in Egypt. Using cross-sectional data from the Egyptian Labour Market Panel Survey (ELMPS), this paper contributes by (1) showing that this methodology can be applied to a lower-income country; (2) quantifying the proportion of deprived wage-earners and the clustering of their deprivations; (3) discussing that the 2003 labour reform likely had adverse effects on poor-quality of employment. The methodology, results and findings are relevant to other developing countries around the world.