Jordan’s unemployment rate dips slightly in Q1 2025

Jordan’s unemployment rate stood at 21.3 percent in the first quarter of 2025, a slight drop of 0.1 percentage points compared to the same period in 2024, according to the latest quarterly labor force report released by the Department of Statistics.

Over the longer term, unemployment has decreased by 1.5 percentage points since Q1 2022.

Gender Breakdown

The report shows mixed trends by gender:

• Male unemployment rose to 18.6 percent, up 1.2 percentage points from Q1 2024.
• Female unemployment dropped significantly to 31.2 percent, down 3.5 percentage points year-on-year.

Compared to the previous quarter (Q4 2024), male unemployment increased slightly by 0.4 points, while female unemployment declined by 1 point.

Notably, 60 percent of unemployed individuals hold at least a high school diploma, while 40 percent have lower educational qualifications.

Employment and Workforce Participation

• 31.0 percent of Jordanians aged 23 and older are employed.
• Among employed men, 60 percent are between the ages of 20 and 39; for women, that figure is 58.2 percent.
• 43 percent of employed individuals hold qualifications higher than high school; 46.3 percent have less than high school education.

Wage employment remains dominant:

• 86.8 percent of the employed workforce are wage earners.
• 95.4 percent of employed women and 84.8 percent of men are paid employees.

The share of foreign workers declined to 44.0 percent of the total workforce in Q1 2025, compared to 44.7 percent in the same quarter last year.

Economic Participation

The adjusted economic participation rate (the ratio of the labor force to the population aged 15+) was 32.9 percent in Q1 2025, down from 34.1 percent in Q1 2024.

• Male participation dropped from 53.7 percent to 51.2 percent.
• Female participation fell from 15.5 percent to 14.5 percent, remaining well below the Arab region average of 18 percent.

The data show clear gender-based differences in education levels within the workforce:

• 55.2 percent of working men have less than a high school education, compared to just 8.5 percent of working women.
• 75.6 percent of women in the labor force have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 27.1 percent of men.

Women also represent 22.3 percent of all employees in the public sector.

Methodology

The Labor Force Survey covered 16,560 households across all governorates, both urban and rural, and follows internationally adopted standards.

Conducted mid-quarter, the survey captures labor market conditions across the full quarter — January, February, and March — by asking respondents whether they had actively sought work in the previous four weeks.