Understanding Algerian unemployment policies beyond rent redistribution

In February 2022, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune announced a new unemployment benefit for first-time jobseekers aged 19 to 40. On March 28, 580,000 young Algerians received their first $90 monthly payment.

Though many young people have rushed to the offices of the National Employment Agency (ANEM) to register for the new benefit, potential problems have already cropped up. For one, how can the government ensure that workers in the informal market, which is the main employer of youth, do not commit fraud by declaring they are unemployed? Will the policy really allow recipients to “meet their basic needs,” as the government says, given the current inflation rate of 7.7%? More broadly, how financially sustainable is the new scheme, as candidates who don’t find a new job can still expect to receive benefits for two years? Since only one member of a married couple can receive the benefit, will women’s unemployment — already lower than men’s — decline further? Above all, how egalitarian is this new benefit scheme? First-time job seekers have not contributed to any pension system, the average salary in the private sector is $180 per month, and it excludes young graduates who have benefited from previous subsidized short-term placements yet are still unemployed.

As crucial as such questions are, they have been obscured by the broader perception that the main aim of Algeria’s (un)employment policies is to buy social peace. With Russia’s war on Ukraine causing a jump in oil prices and the government’s violent suppression of the Hirak protest movement, some are even betting that the Algerian regime might prove resilient for years to come.

But these interpretations are ill-founded and lack a serious empirical and sociological understanding of the experience of unemployed Algerian youth, which is essential to make up for the lack of official data. Such a view not only prevents us from analyzing these policies’ effects on the Algerian economy and accurately measuring the decline in living standards, but it also does not say much about the logic of subsidizing unemployed youth mainly as “unemployed” in an already precarious job market. Moreover, these policies do not engender political support for the current leadership. Rather, they result in frustration on the part of young people at being assigned inefficient social assistance and welfare policies while real rent redistribution benefits those who bypass official state guidelines.

A recent study I conducted on Algerian subsidized policies concerning unemployed graduates and entrepreneurs allowed me to shine a light on why young people put up with these restrictions. It is not because they agree with the so-called rentier model of governance, which they often do not fully understand, and will not consider any other option than being financially dependent on the state. Rather, they believe that the state owes them compensation because it has failed to create a functional job market. Algerian youth feel deeply that, in the absence of genuine forms of social protection and in a context of unequal economic opportunities, the state must intervene to support their entry into the job market.

Acknowledging that the state is in total control of the market is different from being satisfied with the way it manages the country’s resources. Understanding young Algerians’ feelings of being professionally limited by the Algerian rentier model, rather than being voluntary participants in forms of a social contract that only subordinate them, may explain why social unrest has endured despite 25 years of youth employment policies.

Issues of state compensation for unemployed youth are complex and illustrate the limits of the rentier social contract thesis. For instance, the authorities have refused to officially recognize and, in fact, have violently repressed, the various workers’ unions young beneficiaries of ANEM programs have tried to set up since 2011. Those include the National Committee for Pre-Employment and the Social Safety Net, whose members have regularly protested against their accumulation of short-term unemployed integration contracts (sometimes for more than 10 years) that did not led to tenure as promised. Demonstrations by the "unemployed of the south” (chômeurs du Sud) have also been recurrent since the early 2000s and organized with others in the National Committee for the Defense of Unemployed Rights (CNDDC) since 2011 who think they should have priority access to jobs, as the national rent, in the form of oil, is extracted from “their land.” In July 2021 these protests were met with widespread violence across the whole south of Algeria. Though some accepted government concessions meant to end the protests, such as placements in public administration and small business loans, frustrations have remained.

Algerian authorities have always increased placements and loans in an effort to diffuse social tensions (such as the Arab Spring in 2011 and the Hirak in 2019) and threats to their own privileges emanating from shifts in governance (such as President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's re-election in 2004 and 2008, Tebboune's presidential campaign in 2019, and the internal military strife in 2020-21). Young people, however, believe that personal connections play the biggest role in determining the outcome of their “sponsored” work experience. They are convinced that receiving an allocation, as an unemployed youth, is a compulsory stage to enter the official job market. In my interviews, most stated that without ma'aref (“networks and connections”), they would not have been, or will not be, able to become tenured public employees or succeed in setting up a business. Those with more social and economic capital explained that, for example, it was thanks to a relative or a friend already working in the administration that they were able to access and succeed in (supposedly) open competition exams for tenure. Others reported that their ability to build up a network of clients and suppliers, or inherit these contacts from family members already in the field, was what allowed them to escape bureaucratic red tape and sustain their business.

In the long term, corruption and clientelism are clearly seen as limiting youths’ potential as opposed to enhancing their professional integration. This has been specifically noted by those placed in public administration (especially in the municipalities) who have been subject to various forms of harassment, including but not limited to sexual and psychological harassment, or corruption, like a request to help stuff ballot boxes during an election, to facilitate their professional integration. They often refrain from joining independent workers’ unions, as they believe it could cost them their job.

The government’s subsidies are perceived by young unemployed citizens as the state’s duty. They believe that it should allocate them their share of the national rent, but this still does not guarantee their political loyalty or assuage their grievances.

Recurrent political promises to revive the economy through the promotion of a new generation of young entrepreneurs are undermined by bureaucratic obstacles, lack of private sector reform, inadequate wages, and inflation. These policies, seen by both the state and applicants as short-term solutions to bide time, do not constitute a sustainable framework through which a new long-term social contract can be negotiated.

Amel Boubekeur is a sociologist at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and a non-resident scholar with MEI’s North Africa and the Sahel Program. The views expressed in this piece are her own.

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