the national employment strategy of jordan acknowledges that the large supply of lowwage foreign workers creates pressure at the bottom end of the wage scale the case of jordan illustrates that wages in the informal sector tend to be at the lower end of the wage scale significantly below those of workers in the formal sector while wages are estimated to be around per cent higher in the formal sector in the syrian arab republic the wage difference has reached around per cent for youth in morocco in egypt and lebanon the gap amounts to per cent climbing to per cent for women in egypt while minimum wage legislation exists in most countries of the region it is not necessarily always enforced in the arab region almost per cent of workers are not covered by social security schemes table shows that the share of informal employment in nonagricultural sectors reached per cent in morocco per cent in egypt per cent in yemen and per cent in tunisia