Analysis of the Structural Determinants of Youth Labor Market Status in North Africa : Estimation Using a Multinomial Logit Model[Analyse des déterminants structurels du statut d'activité des jeunes en Afrique du Nord : estimation par modèle logit multinomial]

Youth employment constitutes one of the most persistent structural challenges confronting North African economies. Against this backdrop, the present study aims to identify and quantify the socioeconomic and demographic factors shaping the labor market position of individuals aged 15 to 35 in Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco. The dataset consists of a population-weighted aggregate contingency table constructed for the year 2026, covering a population in excess of 65 million individuals. Since the dependent variable takes four mutually exclusive values employed, unemployed, inactive, and student, a Multinomial Logit model provides the most appropriate estimation framework for capturing the full complexity of youth labor market outcomes. Drawing on this econometric framework, the analysis yields several key findings. Most prominently, gender emerges as the dominant predictor of labor market status: women are substantially overrepresented among inactive individuals and students, reflecting the enduring influence of sociocultural norms across these economies. Beyond gender, age produces a markedly nonlinear effect, with employment transitions becoming significantly more pronounced beyond the age of 25, thereby pointing to a critical threshold in youth professional trajectories. These individual-level determinants are further compounded by significant sectoral disparities with service industries absorbing the vast majority of formal employment as well as by country fixed effects that reveal meaningful structural differences across the three economies under study. The quantification of these effects lends greater analytical precision to the above findings. Average Marginal Effects indicate that being female reduces the probability of employment by 35.2 percentage points (pp), all else equal, while simultaneously increasing the probability of inactivity by 18.4 pp and of being a student by 22.7 pp. Regarding the age effect, the inflection point of the employment transition is statistically located around ages 22–24. In terms of cross-country disparities, Egypt exhibits a significantly more favorable employment profile than Algeria, with a conditional employment probability 15.4 pp higher. On the robustness front, the Hausman-McFadden test validates the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives assumption (χ² (6) = 8.34; p = 0.214), thereby confirming the reliability of the model specification. Taken together, these results carry direct implications for the design of gender-sensitive and age-targeted employment policies across the region.