Reproducibility package for Labor Market Effects Of Public Employment Guarantee

Public employment guarantee (PEG) schemes, which channeled graduates into lifetime positions in the civil service and state-owned enterprises (SOEs), were central to state-led industrialization across the postcolonial world, yet remain far less studied than temporary workfare programs. This paper provides the first causal estimates of their labor market effects, exploiting Egypt’s archetypal PEG, which from the early 1960s guaranteed public sector jobs to secondary and university graduates without competitive examination. We measure district-level exposure by secondary school supply on the eve of the reform (1959/60) and link it to individual-level census microdata from 1986, 1996, and 2006. Using an event-study design with continuous treatment intensity, we compare cohorts who differed in their age at the PEG’s introduction across districts with differing pre-reform school supply. We find that the PEG reallocated urban male wage employment away from the private sector and toward SOEs, with no comparable shift in rural districts, where SOEs were largely absent. The reallocation was concentrated in manufacturing and high-skilled white-collar occupations, consistent with the policy channeling educated workers into the sectors central to the state’s industrialization drive. We find little evidence that the PEG raised educational attainment, indicating that it primarily redirected an already growing pool of educated workers rather than expanding the supply of schooling.