Editing Economy of Morocco (section)

===Unemployment===
Morocco's [[unemployment]] rate, long a cause for concern, has been dropping steadily in 2008, on the back of job growth in services and construction. Further institutional reforms to bolster competitiveness and financial openness are expected to help the trend to continue.

On the whole, the growth rate of the economy will not reduce the unemployment rate
significantly, also taking account of the constant rise in the number of first entrants on the
labour market. The growth level of the last five years did, however, reduce urban
unemployment from 22% in 1999 to 18.3% in 2005, and the national rate from 13.9% in 1999
to 10.8% in 2005. The State [[Haut Commissariat au Plan|High Planning Commission]] that Morocco's official unemployment rate dropped to 9.1% in Q2 2008, down from 9.6% in Q1. This leaves Morocco with some 1.03m unemployed, compared to 1.06m at the end of March. Unemployment stood at 9.8% at the end of 2007, up 0.1% from the end of 2006.

Urban areas saw particularly strong job growth, and the services and construction sectors were the two leading drivers of job creation. Services generated some 152,000 new jobs, with the business process outsourcing (BPO) and telecoms sector proving particularly dynamic. Meanwhile, government infrastructure projects, as well as heavy [[Investment in Morocco|private investment]] in real estate and tourism helped boost the construction sector, which created 80,000 new jobs in the second quarter of 2008.

Evidently, this trend of falling unemployment rates is a positive one. Joblessness has long been a cause for serious concern in North Africa. Morocco has a [[List of countries by unemployment rate|lower rate]] than its [[Maghreb]] neighbours—[[Tunisia]] has a rate of around 13.9%, and in [[Algeria]] it is around 12.3%—but the issue is still a pressing one, both for economic and for social reasons. A 2006 government report suggested that the country needed a net increase of 400,000 jobs annually for the next two decades in order to provide enough employment for its people, given the underlying demographic dynamic.

Moreover, with Spanish construction firms facing much harder times, Morocco may soon face the additional challenge of workers returning from across the [[Strait of Gibraltar|Gibraltar Straits]], potentially putting further pressure on the authorities to create jobs.

With 30.5% of [[Demographics of Morocco|Morocco's population]] of 34.3m aged 14 or younger, according to the [[CIA]], job creation for youths is one of the government's major priorities. 2007 data indicate that 17.6% of those in the 15–24 age group are unemployed. This rises to around one third in urban areas—rural communities often employ the young in agriculture, including on the family farm, as soon as they leave school, contributing to relatively high youth employment rates (lower levels of official unemployment registration are also a factor).<ref name="Edward Hugh"/>