Policy takeaway: Youth-centered interventions that try to "fix" aspirations are likely insufficient. Instead, Egypt needs structural reforms that create formal, high-quality jobs and better align the education system with actual labor market demand. 8/ end
We also looked at skills: over-skilling is more common than under-skilling for many basic competencies. Workers are frequently over-skilled in basic literacy (24%) and technical skills (24%), while field-of-study mismatch exceeds 90% for many common occupations. 7/
Interestingly, the degree of over-education doesn't vary much by specialization. Whether in vocational secondary or most university fields (except medicine, science, and engineering), graduates face similar levels of mismatch. This suggests a systemic problem across the education system. 6/
Among the currently employed, 51% of workers are over-educated for their jobs. This is a pervasive issue, but it is most acute in the informal private sector, where 64% of workers have more education than their positions require. 5/
There is a gender gap in what jobs are acceptable. Unemployed women reject 96%-99% of roles like waiter, industrial worker, or driver. Because women often select out of the labor force if they cannot find a job meeting their preferences, employed women tend to be better matched than men. 4/
For the non-employed, the issue is often a lack of decent work. While the unemployed are willing to accept lower wages for high-quality public sector jobs, these roles are increasingly scarce. In contrast, 90% of reservation wages exceed the predicted market wages in the informal private sector. 3/
Mismatch in Egypt has two inter-linked dimensions: structural (disconnect between labor demand and supply) and aspirational (misalignment between expectations and market realities). We find that these forces reinforce each other, shaping the entire labor market. 2/
Mismatch in the Egyptian labor market Caroline Krafft1 and Carmen Armas Montalvo2 Abstract High rates of unemployment and non-participation in the labor market are often attributed to labor market mismatch. This paper examines the mismatch between job seekers’ expectations and Egypt’s labor market realities. For the non-employed, analyses examine reservation wages and what occupations the unemployed would accept. For the employed, analyses explore skills and educational attainment relative to the skill and educational requirements of their jobs. The results demonstrate that the non-employed generally have reasonable wage expectations and are willing to accept public sector jobs, but these jobs, and to some degree formal private sector jobs, are not readily available. The non-employed, and especially women, are less likely to accept more readily available informal private sector employment. As a result of women being more selective in what employment they accept, among the employed, women’s skills and qualifications better match their job requirements than men’s, although overeducation and over-skill are substantial issues for both men and women. There are not differences in overeducation by vocational secondary specialization or among most higher education specializations, suggesting a pervasive problem of mismatch throughout the education system. Keywords: Mismatch, labor markets, education, skills, unemployment, reservation wages, Egypt JEL codes: J21, J23, J24, J31, J64, I21
🧵Excited to share our new working paper: "Mismatch in the Egyptian labor market" with Carmen Armas Montalvo. We use the 2023 Egypt Labor Market Panel Survey to investigate why high unemployment and low participation persist despite rapid educational expansion. hdl.handle.net/10419/339993 1/ #EconSky
I am particularly interested in getting a bunch early career folks (including advanced grad students) together for the MENA event so we can start organizing as a "sub subfield." Methodologically inclusive! Just has to be historical. DM with questions.
CfP for our 3rd Annual HPE Conference @uscprice.bsky.social @usc.edu sponsored by @usccis.bsky.social and PIPE. Submit by May 30. If you work on MENA, I am running a smaller pre-conference for HPE papers focused on the region. @polisky.bsky.social docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
Israel killed an average of at least 47 girls and women per day in Gaza.
A new analysis published by the United Nations shows that more than 38,000 girls and women were killed in between October 2023 and December 2025.
The takeaway: ECCE is vital for children's development, but it is not a "silver bullet" for female employment in Jordan. To be effective, it likely needs to be paired with longer care hours and flexible or remote work options. 10/10
Our findings contribute to a growing body of evidence showing that the MENA region is a global outlier. While ECCE usually helps mothers work elsewhere, my other studies in Egypt and Algeria have also shown no labor market improvements from ECCE expansion. 9/10
Deep structural and gender norms also continue to limit women’s private-sector options in Jordan. Women often face high caregiving responsibilities and social expectations that discourage working in available jobs. 8/10
Why isn’t ECCE moving the needle for employment? One major factor we identified is the short school day, which averages only five hours in Jordan. This is often too short to allow for a standard full-time work without additional care arrangements. 7/10
We also tested for heterogeneity—could ECCE help certain groups more than others? Even when looking across maternal education, region, or travel time to school, we found no evidence of differential effects. 6/10
We looked beyond just employment and found no systematic evidence that ECCE enrollment affected labor force participation, hours worked, or monthly wages. These null results were robust across different statistical specifications. 5/10
While we found that school eligibility rules do create sharp, significant jumps in children’s enrollment, our results show no significant impact on maternal employment. Whether a child was in KG1, KG2, or Grade 1, their mother was not more likely to be working. 4/10
Our research used the 2025 Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey (JLMPS) to investigate if ECCE enrollment for children aged 4, 5, and 6 could relax childcare constraints. We used a fuzzy regression discontinuity design (FRDD) based on birth year eligibility cutoffs. 3/10
Jordan has some of the world's lowest female labor force participation (FLFP) rates, estimated at only 15% in 2025. For mothers with young children aged 3–5, that employment rate drops even further to just 9%. 2/10
The impact of early childhood care and education on maternal employment in Jordan Caroline Krafft,1 Ragui Assaad, 2 Paloma Avendano, 3 and Ruotong Li4 Abstract Globally, women’s employment rates decline with family formation, due to their disproportionate unpaid care responsibilities. Policies and services such as early childhood care and education (ECCE) can potentially reduce care responsibilities for mothers, increasing their employment rates. This paper examines the impact of ECCE on mothers’ employment outcomes in Jordan, a context with very low rates of female employment. Analyses rely on a regression discontinuity design, namely age cutoffs that drive eligibility for the first grade of kindergarten (age 4), the second grade of kindergarten (age 5), and basic schooling (age 6). The results reveal no significant changes in mothers’ employment or other labour-market outcomes across age groups, and no heterogeneous effects by mothers’ or fathers’ education, region, or travel time to school. The results remain robust under a range of alternative specifications. Our findings suggest that ECCE is not guaranteed to increase women’s employment rates in low employment rate contexts.
🧵 We just released our new working paper examining whether expanding early childhood care and education (ECCE) increases employment for mothers in Jordan (with Ragui Assaad, @pavendano.bsky.social and Ruotong Li. You can read the full study here: #EconSky www.theigc.org/sites/defaul... 1/10
We all have days like this
Paper using EU-SILC data shows: in heterosexual couples, when men experience an earnings loss, material deprivation rises. Stable female employment can buffer the shock; having small children shapes how prevalent this buffer is, not its effectiveness. www.demographic-research.org/articles/vol...
The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they're the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive-because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about "Western civilization," while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.
Really powerful, hopeful paragraph from the latest article in the Atlantic by @adamserwer.bsky.social
I've been reading a lot of papers on making data AI-ready and what I'm finding is that most of them report practices that were best practices before AI.
Good documentation, standardization, interoperable formats, clear naming conventions, etc.
Is there something new we should be doing though?
One senior finance official was fired as a result of the investigation into the missing $3 million. But in an interview, he told me he had nothing to do with it; he started his job eight months after the problem began. Some twists and turns in this one... sahanjournal.com/education/mi...
NEW—I got an exclusive excerpt from a USAID whistleblower's new book that made me gasp multiple times. It details Trump's dismantling of the humanitarian aid agency & his team/DOGE's shocking ignorance to public health.
'Into the Wood Chipper' by Nicholas Enrich is out tomorrow. Read excerpt here:
📣 "Community-engaged “Data Fest” events: Applying econometric skills to build confidence" new paper with Kristine West, Meghan Mason, Louise Ba and Joy Moua #EconSky #TeachEcon www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
