Morocco ended 2025 with a labor market that looked better on the headline than it felt on the shop floor: more jobs, slightly less unemployment, and wage floors set to rise again, alongside a growing share of workers who say they cannot get enough hours or steady income.
The High Commission for Planning said the economy created 167,000 jobs between the third quarter of 2024 and the third quarter of 2025, almost entirely in cities.
But underemployment rose to 11.1 percent from 10 percent, and the number of underemployed people increased to 1.199 million, a sign that job creation is not consistently translating into full time work.
Unemployment fell to 13.1 percent, and the unemployed population declined to 1.629 million, HCP said. The distribution remained stark: 15 to 24 year olds faced 38.4 percent unemployment, women 21.6 percent, and graduates 19 percent.
The unemployment rate may decline while insecurity grows because job creation can expand part time or unstable work faster than it creates steady full-time positions.
With inflation low, policymakers had more space to raise wage floors without risking a price surge. Morocco’s annual inflation was 0.3 percent in November, and the central bank projected average inflation of 0.8 percent for 2025, rising gradually in 2026 and 2027.
That low inflation backdrop is one reason wages became the most visible deliverable of social dialogue.
On Dec. 18, the Council of Government adopted a draft decree setting a 5 percent increase in the legal minimum wage in non agricultural activities from Jan. 1, 2026 and a 5 percent increase in the agricultural minimum wage from April 1, 2026, presented as part of implementation of an April 2024 tripartite agreement involving the government, CGEM and representative unions.
If wages were the carrot, the year’s biggest institutional shift was the rulebook for strikes. Parliament adopted Organic Law 97.15 regulating the right to strike earlier in 2025.
The Constitutional Court validated the text with observations, and it was promulgated by royal dahir dated March 18, 2025 and published in the Official Bulletin.
The law is likely to advantage unions and employers with legal capacity to plan notice periods and documentation, while complicating rapid work stoppages, especially in fragmented sectors where employment is already informal.
The year also exposed how labor governance can be knocked off course by administrative vulnerability.
AI and entry level work became the other pressure point because it hit a sector that functions as an early rung for urban youth. A wave of layoffs in call centers, attributing the shock to automation linked to artificial intelligence and tighter French rules on telemarketing without prior consent, a stress that landed just as the state tried to reposition offshoring as a higher value jobs machine.
Read also: Morocco’s offshoring sector makes a comeback, but don’t expect it to last
A government circular operationalizing the “Offshoring Morocco” program described a target of 130,000 additional stable direct jobs, including 50,000 by 2026.
The next test will be whether recent wage increases and easing inflation translate into sustained purchasing power for low-income workers, while new strike rules alter labor negotiations and offshoring continues to absorb entry-level employment amid structural shifts in digital services.
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