As they cut back on hiring, Arab bureaucracies are spending more to get less
Civil-service jobs are hard to find and often poorly paid, yet still in high demand
DRIVING an uber was never part of Karim’s plan. His father had a comfortable job at Egypt’s national-statistics agency. His grandfather was a civil servant too, hired during the large expansion of the public sector in the era of Gamal Abdel Nasser. Five years ago, armed with his accounting degree from Cairo University, Karim set out in search of his own sinecure doing sums for the state.
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “The incredible shrinking state”
From the March 11th 2023 edition
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