Morocco’s healthcare graduates are raising concerns over rising unemployment as recruitment opportunities remain limited while the number of graduates continues to grow.
Graduates of health training institutes under the Health Ministry, including nurses, health technicians, emergency and ambulance technicians, and others, are calling on the ministry to create enough jobs and include some specialties in upcoming recruitment exams.
“The number of positions allocated each year does not match the number of graduates, despite the shortages across several fields in the health sector,” Ahmed Chenaoui, national secretary of the Independent Union of Administrative and Technical Health and Social Protection Staff, told Hespress English.
One of the fields facing unemployment is emergency and ambulance services.
According to Chenaoui, only 200 positions were allocated this year for emergency and ambulance technicians, while the number of graduates is close to 400.
He added that care assistants in specialties such as geriatric care and childcare are also struggling to find jobs.
Chenaoui said the Health Ministry should better match the number of graduates with the jobs available, especially as it decides how many students can enroll in these institutes each year.
He said the solution is not to stop training in these fields, given the serious staff shortages in the health sector, but to create more positions that match the number of graduates.
The Health Ministry allocated more than 8,000 positions last year, Chenaoui said, but they were still not enough to absorb graduates across the different fields.
In recent years, Morocco has expanded healthcare training and increased public-sector recruitment to address staff shortages.
Undergraduate health sciences seats rose by 206% to 8,360 in 2024, while public sector healthcare jobs increased from 4,000 in 2019 to a projected 6,500 in 2025, 60% of them for nurses and health technicians.
The government also announced plans to raise the number of healthcare workers from 17.4 per 10,000 people in 2022 to 45 by 2030, but despite these efforts, many trained nurses and health technicians continue to face unemployment.
The issue of rising unemployment among graduates of Morocco’s higher institutes for nursing and health techniques has also reached Parliament.
Aicha Zilfi, a member of the Socialist Group Federal Opposition, sent a written question to the Health Minister, raising concerns over the growing gap between training and job opportunities.
She noted that the Health Ministry has expanded training and introduced new specialties in recent years, but this has not been matched by enough recruitment opportunities.
The number of graduates is expected to reach around 7,000 this year, in addition to 1,500 graduates still unemployed from previous years, bringing the total to around 8,500, while only around 5,000 positions are expected for nurses and health technicians, Zilfi added.
She also pointed to the limited number of jobs in some newly introduced specialties compared with the number of graduates, questioning the reason behind offering new training programs without clear career prospects.
Zilfi said the private sector cannot fully address the problem, given limited job opportunities, low wages, and poor working conditions in parts of the sector.
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