Each Egyptian on the government’s payroll serves fewer than 20 citizens
parking garage in Cairo, a row of freshly painted machines wait to dispense tickets to drivers. But the machines are turned off. Attendants stand next to them and hand out tickets manually. It is one of many useless government jobs in the Egyptian capital. Stamping passports at the airport can be a three-person affair. Offices are full of functionaries who make photocopies or brew tea . More than 5m Egyptians work in the civil service.
Many Arab countries are in a similar situation. Cushy state sinecures were once seen as a birthright. Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak bloated Egypt’s public sector to keep the middle class loyal. Gulf governments started a long hiring spree during the oil boom of the 1970s. For a generation, though, public-sector hiring has not kept pace with population growth. Though Egypt’s workforce has swollen by 7.7m since 2005, the bureaucracy registered a net increase of just 190,000.
Unemployed young people scare autocrats: they start protests. If economies stay sluggish, governments will be loth to cut their payroll, despite the cost. For every young Arab keen to start a tech firm or a small business, another is happy to accept a make-work job. A poll in 2016 by Asda’a Burson-Marsteller, afirm, found that half of Arab youth want government gigs. In the Gulf the figure rises to 70%. State jobs are seen as more secure, more lucrative and less demanding than private ones.
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