Factors Influencing Youth's Decision in Entering Formal and Informal Labour Markets in Egypt

This paper attempts to uncover the factors influencing youth's choices into labour market in Egypt. Using the ILO's School-to-work transition survey (Egypt, 2014) as the main source of data, the paper is trying to formulate a clear idea about the socio-economic and demographic background characteristics of both formal and informal sector workers. Using "Discriminant Function Analysis", the results confirm to the hypothesis that formal workers are different from those who join the informal labor markets. Informal sector workers are likely to be more male-dominant, younger, mostly reside in rural areas, poorly educated, have no-formal education or training experiences, have more children, comes from a financially poor families, and educationally less advantages parents. Education, place of residence, age at first marriage, parents' level of education, and principal work status made the greatest contribution in differentiating between the two groups and can be considered as the most predictor variables of the informal workers.