As results for 78,000 Palestinian high school students who sat for this year’s General Certificate Exam, locally known as Tawjihi, get ready to be announced on Saturday, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said in a new report published today that unemployment rate for high school and university graduates between the age of 20 to 29 years remains one of the highest in the country.
It said approximately 40,000 students graduate annually from the Palestinian higher education institutions while the local market accommodates only 8,000 job opportunities for graduates between 20 and 29 years of age. It takes graduates about 10 to 23 months before getting their first labor chance.
In 2019, the highest period of unemployment for graduates aged 20 to 29 years in Palestine with an intermediate diploma or bachelor’s degree was in the journalism and information field, being 23 months. The lowest period was in mathematics and statistics field and engineering and engineering trades with 10 months.
The unemployment rate among individuals aged 20-29 years with an intermediate diploma or bachelor’s degree in Palestine is still high in 2019 with a slight decrease compared to this rate in 2018, said the PCBS. This rate reached 53% in 2019: 35% in West Bank and 72% in Gaza Strip, while it was about 55% in 2018 in Palestine.
In 2019, individuals aged 20 to 29 years obtained an intermediate diploma or bachelor’s degree specialized in the following fields of education:
Business and administration (28%), teacher training and education sciences (16%), health (11%), social and behavioral sciences (8%), humanities (8%) and other fields (29%), while the majority of them also majored in business and administration compared to the past decade.
