two most recent rounds of the ELMPS data conducted in 2012 and 2018 to characterize the Egyptian labor market post-Arab Spring. As in a typical labor market survey, the ELMPS covers topics such as employment, unemployment, job dynamics, and earnings. It also provides very rich information on education, household demographics, migration, and socio-economic characteristics.

We rely on the cross-sectional dimension of the ELMPS surveys in 2012 and 2018 and also exploit the panel dimension of the data when examining labor market transitions between 2012 and 2018. The 2018 survey tracks households and individuals who were previously interviewed in 2012 and also includes a refresher sample of 2,000 households. By design, the refresher sample oversampled rural communities that were among the “1,000 poorest villages” of Egypt (see Krafft, Assaad and Rahman (2019) for more information on the data and sample design).

In our analysis, we make use of the employment module of the ELMPS, which provides information on individual work status (employed, unemployed, or out of the labor force) and rely on the market definition of work status with reference one week. The market definition of employment considers as employed only individuals engaged in market economic activities, while it excludes individuals who engage in subsistence economic activities. Following the ILO, we also rely on a standard unemployment definition, which requires individuals to be actively searching for a job to be considered as unemployed. We also distinguish between employed individuals depending on their sector of employment (public versus private) and on the formality status. Therefore, we rely on the following tripartite classification: public formal, private formal, and private informal sectors. An individual is considered to be employed in the formal sector if the individual has a work contract and a social security for the primary job, while an individual is considered to be informally employed if the individual did not have a work contract, social security, or neither. Public sector jobs include the following: public and government, while private sector jobs include the following: private, investment, international, and other.

Whenever relying on the cross-sectional rounds of ELMPS, we focus on individuals aged between 20 and 59 years old in each round. On the other hand, when we rely on the panel dimension, we focus on those aged at least 20 in 2012 and at most 59 in 2018 (hence 53 in 2012) to account for aging between the two surveys. Table A.1 in the Appendix reports descriptive statistics on the sample of men and women as well as discussions on the sampling bias resulting from focusing on the panel sample. We contrast raw data from each round of the ELMPS survey against our cross-sectional and panel samples, to which the age restrictions described above are applied.

# **2.2 Encuesta Nacional de Ocupación y Empleo (ENOE)**

The ENOE is Mexico’s labor force survey, nationally representative of the population older than 14. As does the ELMPS, the ENOE also includes comparable labor market characteristics of labor market states and dynamics, as well as demographic information on age, gender, education, among others. Notably, the ENOE is conducted at a much higher frequency than the ELMPS. In each 4