Labor Statistics in the Occasion of May Day

Jordanian as well as millions of workers in the world celebrate the annual May Day, at a time when the unemployment rate in Jordan reached its lowest levels at 12.1% during the first quarter of this year.

The Jordanian labor movement is considered one of the pioneering labor movements in the Arab world. The Jordanian Trade Union was founded in 1954. It had participated in establishing the Arab Trade Union where its representatives participated in the first founding conference, and participated in most meetings and activities that took place at the Arab level. The Jordanian labor movement made substantial progress during more than half a century in taking advantage of the positive conditions, high national spirit, constructive cooperation and concern for the property of the nation of all development partners, which contributed to development, progress and enormous gains for the national labor movement.

To raise performance levels, rehabilitation and labor skills in Jordan, the Institute of Labor Culture was established. The laws governing public safety by the concerned government bodies and the increasing labor awareness contributed to stabilize the number of causalities despite the increasing number of workers. The number of injuries was (17477) in 2001 and (17385) in 2007. In spite of the stable number of work injuries, but expenditure on these cases has increased significantly between 2001 and 2007. The figure was JD. (1,904,695) and JD (2,845,528) respectively. The number of insured workers by the Social Security Cooperation has risen from (366330) in 2000 to (724167) in 2007.

The minimum monthly Wage Rate has risen to JD 150. Likewise the wages and salaries have improved significantly, with the monthly wage rate rising from JD 60 in the mid-1970s up to JD 211 in the 1990s and then risen to JD 305 in 2007.The following table shows the average of wages and salaries during the period 2000-2006.

The average monthly wages and salaries for workers employed in public and private institutions during 2000-2007.

Furthermore, membership with the various trade unions has witnessed a tangible demand by workers in various professions.  The number of members reached 136079 in 2006.

Successive governments have been keen to enable workers to play an effective and influential role through the provision of social protection to them, and guarantee their rights, in order to achieve their aspirations to live in dignity and future security, believing that the relationship between the three partners in the production process must be built on trust, which is based on a serious dialogue that leads to achieve the desired goals. The Jordanian labor movement was also keen to promote closer partnership and constructive cooperation between the public and private sectors to provide training opportunities for Jordanian workers and enhance their skills, which qualify them to work in different economic sectors, and provide them with opportunities to demonstrate their ability in production and creativity.

The results of the employment and unemployment surveys indicate the growing percentage of the economically active Jordanians who hold an educational qualification   (Bachelor degree or higher) between 2003 and 2008. Their percentage rose from 19.2% to 24.6% between the above two years. In contrast, the ratio of economically active Jordanians below the bachelor degree level has gone down from 78.6% in 2003 to 75.2% in 2008. The illiterates constitute a small percentage of the economically active Jordanians, they have accounted for 2.2% and 1.4% in 2003 and 2008 respectively.

In spite of the gains achieved by the Jordanian labor movement, it is still facing many challenges in the local labor market, the most important of which is the competition with foreign labor, which increased dramatically and hindered the Jordanian labor force from benefiting from the employment opportunities created by different economic sectors on one hand, and kept unemployment rates constant in spite of the efforts being made to reduce and limit the spread of the phenomenon of unemployment.

The economic participation of Jordanian women still far from the desired level, where the Refined Activity Rate of the Jordanian women was 14.2% only, which indicates that one woman out of every seven women were economically active in 2008 compared with one man among every 1.6 men in the age 15 years and

The Refined Activity Rate of the Jordanian population 15 years and above

 Data Source: the Statistical Year Book.