Abstract
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) labour market is emblematic of large youth unemployment and discouragement rates and disproportionately high levels of unemployment among the educated youth. Using school-to-work transition surveys for Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia, we explore whether this is related to inequality of opportunity or rather to deeper structural characteristics that create a mismatch between the skills demanded in the market and those supplied by labour market entrants. We find that the low availability of high-skill jobs and the low value placed on skills gained through the system of vocational training have high explanatory power.