Morocco’s economy continues to expand, but that growth is translating into fewer new jobs, according to an analysis by Medias24. The employment-growth elasticity — how much employment responds to changes in real GDP — stood at just 0.18 over 2007-2025, excluding the exceptional shock of 2020 and the 2021 rebound.
The decline has been sharpest in recent years. The elasticity fell from 0.23 between 2007 and 2012 to 0.19 between 2013 and 2019, before dropping to just 0.06 between 2022 and 2025. Over the full period, cumulative real GDP grew 84.7%, while employment rose only 11.5%. Between 2022 and 2025 alone, GDP grew 15.7% while employment increased by just 0.9%, a stretch in which employment fell in 2022 and 2023 before recovering in 2024 and 2025.
The analysis attributes the weak link partly to job losses in agriculture, where rural job destruction — driven by recurring drought — has largely offset urban job creation in recent years. A second factor is the nature of recent growth, heavily driven by public investment in 2024 and 2025; such growth generates activity without producing the same volume of durable jobs as private-sector expansion, with many construction jobs tied to public contracts disappearing once projects end.
Productivity gains may also play a role, though Bank Al-Maghrib data suggests they are not the main driver: labour productivity growth in non-agricultural sectors slowed, from 3.1% in 2023 to 1.6% in 2024. Four years is described as too short to confirm the elasticity decline is structural, but the data shows recent growth has generated comparatively few additional jobs.
Strengthening the durable link between growth and employment, the analysis concludes, depends chiefly on a more dynamic private sector capable of investing, expanding and hiring in durable activities such as industry, high-value-added services and export-oriented sectors — a shift that could set off a virtuous cycle in which growth stimulates hiring, employment supports demand, and demand encourages further investment.
