Economy of Algeria - Labor

Labor

See also: Trade unions in Algeria

The largest employer is government, which claims 32 percent of the workforce. Even though industry is a much larger part of the economy than agriculture, agriculture employs slightly more people (14 percent of the workforce) than industry (13.4 percent of the workforce). One of the reasons for this disparity is that the energy sector is very capital-intensive. Trade accounts for 14.6 percent of the workforce, while the construction and public works sector employs 10 percent, reflecting the government’s efforts to upgrade the country’s infrastructure and stock of affordable housing.

At the end of 2006, the unemployment rate was about 15.7 percent, but the rate among those under the age of 25 was 70 percent. In 2005 the labor participation rate was only 52 percent, versus an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average of 70 percent. New entrants to the workforce and the lack of emigration options make unemployment a chronic problem and an important challenge to the government. Given its highly capital-intensive nature, the hydrocarbons industry is not in a position to employ many job seekers.

Read more about this topic:  Economy Of Algeria

Famous quotes containing the word labor:

    “Labor came to humanity with the fall from grace and was at best a penitential sacrifice enabling purity through humiliation. Labor was toil, distress, trouble, fatigue—an exertion both painful and compulsory. Labor was our animal condition, struggling to survive in dirt and darkness.”
    —Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)

    “The habits of our whole species fall into three great classes—useful labour, useless labour, and idleness. Of these the first only is meritorious; and to it all the products of labor rightfully belong; but the two latter, while they exist, are heavy pensioners upon the first, robbing it of a large portion of its just rights. The only remedy for this is to, as far as possible, drive useless labour and idleness out of existence.”
    —Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)

    “I’ve studied now Philosophy
    And Jurisprudence, Medicine—
    And even, alas! Theology—
    From end to end with labor keen;
    And here, poor fool! with all my lore
    I stand, no wiser than before.”
    —Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)