THE CLEANED AND HARMONIZED VERSION OF THE SURVEY DATA PRODUCED AND PUBLISHED BY THE ECONOMIC RESEARCH FORUM REPRESENTS 100% OF THE ORIGINAL SURVEY DATA COLLECTED BY THE CENTRAL AGENCY FOR PUBLIC MOBILIZATION AND STATISTICS (CAPMAS) <\/p> \n\nIn any society, the human element represents the basis of the work force which exercises all the service and production activities. Therefore, it is a mandate to produce labor force statistics and studies, that is related to the growth and distribution of manpower and labor force distribution by different types and characteristics.\n\nIn this context, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics conducts \"Quarterly Labor Force Survey\" which includes data on the size of manpower and labor force (employed and unemployed) and their geographical distribution by their characteristics.\n\nBy the end of each year, CAPMAS issues the annual aggregated labor force bulletin publication that includes the results of the quarterly survey rounds that represent the manpower and labor force characteristics during the year.\n\n---> Historical Review of the Labor Force Survey:\n\n1- The First Labor Force survey was undertaken in 1957. The first round was conducted in November of that year, the survey continued to be conducted in successive rounds (quarterly, bi-annually, or annually) till now.\n\n2- Starting the October 2006 round, the fieldwork of the labor force survey was developed to focus on the following two points:\n a. The importance of using the panel sample that is part of the survey sample, to monitor the dynamic changes of the labor market.\n b. Improving the used questionnaire to include more questions, that help in better defining of relationship to labor force of each household member (employed, unemployed, out of labor force ...etc.). In addition to re-order of some of the already existing questions in much logical way.\n\n3- Starting the January 2008 round, the used methodology was developed to collect more representative sample during the survey year. this is done through distributing the sample of each governorate into five groups, the questionnaires are collected from each of them separately every 15 days for 3 months (in the middle and the end of the month) \n\n4- Starting the January 2012 round, in order to follow the international recommendation, to avoid asking extra questions that affect the precision and accuracy of the collected data, a shortened version of the questionnaire was designed to include the core questions that enable obtaining the basic Egyptian labor market indicators. The shortened version is collected usually in three rounds, while the long version that includes more information on housing conditions and immigration of the questionnaire is usually collected in one round . \n\n---> The survey aims at covering the following topics:\n\n1- Measuring the size of the Egyptian labor force among civilians (for all governorates of the republic) by their different characteristics.\n2- Measuring the employment rate at national level and different geographical areas.\n3- Measuring the distribution of employed people by the following characteristics: Gender, age, educational status, occupation, economic activity, and sector.\n4- Measuring unemployment rate at different geographic areas. \n5- Measuring the distribution of unemployed people by the following characteristics: Gender, age, educational status, unemployment type \u201cever employed\/never employed\u201d, occupation, economic activity, and sector for people who have ever worked.\n\nThe raw survey data provided by the Statistical Agency were cleaned and harmonized by the Economic Research Forum, in the context of a major project that started in 2009. During which extensive efforts have been exerted to acquire, clean, harmonize, preserve and disseminate micro data of existing labor force surveys in several Arab countries.","coll_dates":[{"start":"2023-01-01","end":"2023-03-31","cycle":"First round"},{"start":"2023-04-01","end":"2023-06-30","cycle":"Second round"},{"start":"2023-07-01","end":"2023-09-30","cycle":"Third round"},{"start":"2023-10-01","end":"2023-12-31","cycle":"Fourth round"}],"nation":[{"name":"Egypt","abbreviation":"EGY"}],"geog_coverage":"Covering a sample of urban and rural areas in all the governorates.","analysis_unit":"1- Household\/family.\n2- Individual\/person.","universe":"The survey covered a national sample of households and all individuals permanently residing in surveyed households.","data_kind":"Sample survey data [ssd]","notes":"Household: Includes geographical characteristics, household composition, LFS classification of household members, head's and spouse's characteristics, dwelling characteristics and ownership of durables.\n\nIndividual: Includes demographics, nationality and immigration, education, current labor status, main job, secondary job and last held job characteristics, wages and incomes, unemployment characteristics and inactivity reason(s)."},"method":{"data_collection":{"data_collectors":[{"name":"Central Agency For Public Mobilization & Statistics","abbreviation":"CAPMAS","affiliation":""}],"sampling_procedure":"
THE CLEANED AND HARMONIZED VERSION OF THE SURVEY DATA PRODUCED AND PUBLISHED BY THE ECONOMIC RESEARCH FORUM REPRESENTS 100% OF THE ORIGINAL SURVEY DATA COLLECTED BY THE CENTRAL AGENCY FOR PUBLIC MOBILIZATION AND STATISTICS (CAPMAS) <\/p> \n\n---> Sample Design and Selection\n\nThe sample of Labor Force Survey is a two-stage stratified cluster sample and selfweighted to the extent practical.\n\nThe main elements of the sampling design are described as follows:\n\n* Sample Size \nThe sample size was 90,000 households, distributed at a ratio of 44% to urban areas and 56% to rural areas. They were distributed by means of an average of the proportional to size (P.P.S) method and the Square root allocation method in order to raise the minimum for small governorates.\n\nThe sample was divided to be 551 in urban areas and 699 in rural areas.\n\n* Cluster size \nThe cluster size is 18 households.\n\n* Sampling stages:\n\nA- First sampling stage:\n(1) Primary Sampling Unit: The 2017 population census data was used to obtain an electronic list of areas of aid, or in other words, enumeration areas (EAS) with an average of 600-750 households through all the republic. This list represents the framework of the first phase of the sample, where 10,000 auxiliary areas were selected as primary sampling units (PSU) for the first phase of the main sample.\n(2) Stratification and allocation of the initial inspection unit The governorate is considered the primary layer, which is divided into urban and rural as sub-classes, where the allocation commensurate with the size of the sample between governorates, and between urban and rural areas in each governorate in the first phase of inspection, in order to achieve selfweighting of the basic and sub classes at the national level.\n\nB- Second Sampling phase:\n(1) The division of each initial survey into a number of parts approximately equal in size (150 households \/ part), each part is called an area plot.\n(2) Selecting an area plot (one part of each primary sampling unit) using the simple random sampling method.\n\nC- Third stage of Sampling (Selection of cadastral plots):\n(1) A sample of cadastral plots was chosen for the Labor force survey in a systematic, random sample from the records of cadastral plots in the master sample, 1,250 cadastral plots were allocated to the research sample, which are divided into 551 in urban areas and 699 in rural areas. Where the urban\/rural governorate is considered the strata of the republic, the sample is distributed proportionately to the size.\n(2) The representation of urban and rural areas at the level of the governorates of the Republic has been taken into account.\n\nSample Allocation among Governorates:\nGovernorate is considered the primary main strata that divided into substrata (Urban\/ Rural), allocation proportional to size was determined among governorates as well as among urban and rural in each governorate at the first sampling stage.\n\nA more detailed description of the different sampling stages and allocation of sample across governorates is provided in the Methodology document available among external resources in Arabic.","coll_mode":"Face-to-face [f2f]","research_instrument":"The questionnaire design follows the latest International Labor Organization (ILO) concepts and definitions of labor force, employment, and unemployment.\n\nThe questionnaire comprises 4 tables in addition to the identification and geographic data of household on the cover page. \n\n---> Table 1- The housing conditions of the households \n\nThis table includes information on the housing conditions of the household:\n- Type of the dwelling,\n- Tenure of the dwelling (owned\/rent) ,\n- Availability of facilities and services connected to the house \n- Ownership of durables.\n\n---> Table 2- Demographic and employment characteristics and basic data for all household individuals\n\nIncluding: gender, age, educational status, marital status, residence mobility and current work status\n\n---> Table 3- Employment characteristics table\n\nThis table is filled by employed individuals at the time of the survey or those who were engaged to work during the reference week, and provided information on:\n- Relationship to employer: employer, self-employed, waged worker, and unpaid family worker\n- Economic activity\n- Sector\n- Occupation\n- Effective working hours\n- Health and social insurance\n- Work place\n- Contract type\n- Average monthly wage\n\n---> Table 4- Unemployment characteristics table\n\nThis table is filled by all unemployed individuals who satisfied the unemployment criteria, and provided information on:\n- Type of unemployment (unemployed, unemployed ever worked)\n- Economic activity and occupation in the last held job before being unemployed\n- Last unemployment duration in months\n- Main reason for unemployment","coll_situation":"Field work\n\nSince the first quarter of research (January \u2013 March2020), a complete transformation of data collection using the tablet has been made through designing a program that contains rules for filtering mistakes and sending inquiries as soon as possible and preparing a laboratory to receive and follow up data and return the inquiries that have errors to the field again to correct them again.\n\n1- The field staff was selected from the most experienced persons from CAPMAS and from some young people out side CAPMAS\n2- Central training program for supervisors was conducted at CAPMAS in Cairo and locally in governorates for interviewers and field editors.\n3- Supervision program was implemented on collections data persons in all governorates to check the field work.\n4- Data were collected by using personal interview method for household in dwelling and it had been obtained from the head of household or his wife or any eligible person in case of their absence.\n5- Duties and responsibilities of all levels of field staff (interviewer, editor and supervisor) were defined to enable them perform their tasks accurately and timely.","cleaning_operations":"Data Processing\n\n1- Coding\nSpecialized staff is responsible for coding data of activity, occupation and geographical identification according to activity, occupation and geographical manual, thus the questionnaires will be valid for data entry.\n2- Data entry and tabulations It included machine data entry, data validation and tabulation as well as preparing a final survey bulletin and output tables.\n\n---> Raw Data\n\nOffice editing is one of the main stages of the survey. It started once the questionnaires were received from the field and accomplished by the selected work groups. It includes:\na-Editing of coverage and completeness\nb-Editing of consistency\n\n---> Harmonized Data\n\n- The STATA package is used to clean and harmonize the datasets.\n- The harmonization process starts with a cleaning process for all raw data files received from the Statistical Agency.\n- All cleaned data files are then merged to produce one data file on the individual level containing all variables subject to harmonization.\n- A country-specific program is generated for each dataset to generate\/ compute\/ recode\/ rename\/ format\/ label harmonized variables.\n- A post-harmonization cleaning process is then conducted on the data.\n- Harmonized data is saved on the household as well as the individual level, in SPSS and then converted to STATA, to be disseminated.","method_notes":"Quality Control Procedures\n\nThe precision of survey results depends to a large extent on how the survey has been conducted. As such, it was crucial to exert much effort and to take necessary actions towards rigorous preparation for the present survey. The preparatory activities, set up the general framework of survey implementation such as:\n1- Applying the recent international recommendations of different concepts and definitions.\n2- Evaluating the quality of data in all different implementation stages to avoid or minimize errors to the lowest level possible through:\n A. Implementing field editing after finishing data collection for households in governorates to avoid any errors in suitable time.\n B. Re-interviewing a sample of households by Quality Control Department in some governorates and examining the differences with the original responses then take the necessary procedures."},"analysis_info":{"response_rate":"On the national level (89.0%)\nUrban level (85.0%)\nRural level (92.2%)\n\nResponse rates on the governorate level are presented in the methodology document attached to the documentation materials published in Arabic."}},"data_access":{"dataset_use":{"conf_dec":[{"txt":"To access the micro data, researchers are required to register on the ERF website and comply with the data access agreement.\n\nThe data will be used only for scholarly research, or educational purposes. Users are prohibited from using data acquired from the Economic Research Forum in the pursuit of any commercial or private ventures.","required":"yes","form_no":"","uri":""}],"contact":[{"name":"Economic Research Forum","affiliation":"ERF","email":"erfdataportal@erf.org.eg","uri":"www.erf.org.eg"}],"cit_req":"The users should cite the Economic Research Forum and the Central Agency For Public Mobilization & Statistics as follows:\n\nOAMDI, 2025. Harmonized Labor Force Surveys (HLFS), http:\/\/www.erfdataportal.com\/index.php\/catalog. Version 1.0 of Licensed Data Files; LFS 2023- Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). Egypt: Economic Research Forum (ERF).","conditions":"Licensed datasets, accessible under conditions.","disclaimer":"The Economic Research Forum and the Central Agency For Public Mobilization & Statistics have granted the researcher access to relevant data following exhaustive efforts to protect the confidentiality of individual data. The researcher is solely responsible for any analysis or conclusions drawn from available data."}}},"schematype":"survey"}