Muslim Majorities Development: Youth, Jobs and the Brain Drain

Summary

Youth unemployment, barriers to women's work and the departure of skilled professionals strain Muslim-majority states from Pakistan to the Arab world, with sources split on whether that departure itself does lasting harm.

What it argues

1. Instability and conflict fuel exit

   Pakistan's chronic political instability since 1947, plus the long Afghan war, is linked to almost six million skilled people emigrating between 1971 and 2022, a Pakistani study finds. The ILO counts roughly 10 million MENA youth living close to conflict zones in 2022, and says the Gaza war has deepened regional economic uncertainty. Unstable governance and war push away the people most able to build Muslim-majority states.

2. Joblessness and unrest

   Economist Ragui Assaad ties the breakdown of the social contract and youth joblessness to the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. Brookings says youth frustration over political and economic exclusion "exploded" into the 2011 protests across the region. Unemployment among the young has repeatedly turned into political upheaval in Arab states.

3. Youth unemployment entrenched

   MENA's youth unemployment rate stood at 24.4% in 2023 and is projected at 24.5% in 2024, almost double the global average, the ILO says. Rates run far higher in some states: 42% among Saudi nationals, 43% in Palestine, and 36% in Jordan and Tunisia, Brookings reports. Joblessness among the young is more severe in Muslim-majority states than almost anywhere else.

4. Entrepreneurs face barriers

   Registering a business took a month in Tunisia against two days in France; an Iraqi entrepreneur spent 18 months and $2,500 trying to register his second company. The World Bank blames state-owned enterprises' preferential tax and financing treatment for squeezing out the private-sector jobs young people need. Red tape and state-favoured firms are blocking the private-sector jobs MENA's youth need.

5. Brain drain disputed

   A Pakistani study counts almost six million skilled and qualified people, including over 50,000 health workers, leaving the country between 1971 and 2022, weakening universities and health care. A World Bank-published analysis counters that such fears are largely overblown: emigration rates have stayed roughly flat since the 1970s and skilled migrants remit substantially. Sources disagree on whether losing skilled Muslims abroad genuinely harms their home countries.

6. Youth frustration and exodus

   A Jordanian architecture graduate says years of study have "led to nothing" after four years without full-time work, taking only freelance jobs. More than half of college-educated youth in Sudan, Jordan and Tunisia, and nearly two-thirds in Lebanon, say they want to leave their countries. Educated young Muslims increasingly see leaving, not working at home, as their path forward.

7. Women largely excluded from work

   MENA has the world's lowest female labour-force participation rate, at 19% against a global average of 48%, the World Bank says. Childcare and transport access, unequal pay, and conservative social norms - including husbands and fathers in Jordan opposing wives' or daughters' work - keep women out of jobs. Social norms, not only economics, keep Muslim women out of the workforce.

8. Law shapes women's work

   Legal restrictions still require spousal permission for some women to take jobs and limit the industries, hours and property rights available to them, the World Bank says. Removing such barriers lifted Saudi female participation from 22% to 35% in a few years; Jordan aims to double its rate from 14% to 28% by 2033. Where governments change the law, women's participation in Muslim-majority economies rises sharply.