Egypt’s unemployment rate rose to 7.5% in 3Q2021, up 0.2 percentage points from the April-June quarter, according to official figures (pdf) released by Capmas yesterday.

The reason? The job market doesn’t seem to be absorbing fresh grads: The state statistics bureau chalked up the increase to the entry of fresh graduates into the job market in August and September. This added another 265k people to the labor force during the quarter, leading to the rise in unemployment, it said.

The jobless rate has remained fairly steady over the past year since spiking to a near-two-year high in 2Q2020 due to the effects of the pandemic and the government’s lockdown measures on the economy. Since falling back to pre-pandemic levels of 7.3% in the following quarter, unemployment has remained virtually unchanged, with mild fluctuations quarter-to-quarter.

Youth unemployment was higher than any other age group, with 15-29 year-olds accounting for almost 60% of all jobless people. The unemployment rate among women ticked up 0.3 percentage points to 15.3% while the rate for men was virtually unchanged at 5.8% from 5.7% in 2Q.

But the private sector is still creating jobs: Recent PMIs have seen private sector firms report an uptick in job creation over the past four months, fuelled by better market conditions and improving business confidence.