**Introduction** 1.

<mark>Following the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, several countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), including the Arab Republic of Egypt, underwent economic transitions, with the objective of boosting growth, providing employment opportunities for the youth, stimulating investment, and fostering economic development.</mark> <mark>Youth unemployment is one of the main economic challenges facing the MENA region. Indeed, poor labor market prospects for educated youth were one of the main drivers of the 2011 uprising (Campante and Chor, 2012). This paper focuses on Egypt, the most populous country in the MENA region, with a population approaching 100 million inhabitants. Egypt’s large population is also very young—individuals aged 24 or younger are set to comprise 51% of the population in 2020 (UN World Development Prospects, 2019). As in much of the developing world, Internet use in Egypt has increased exponentially in recent years. According to the</mark> ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators database (2019), the percentage of Internet users in Egypt increased from less than 1 percent in 2000 to reach approximately 47 percent in 2018 (Figure 1).

The growth and diffusion of the Internet constitutes a major shock to information flows, as it facilitates the transfer of vast amounts of information at low-cost. By reducing the cost of information flows, Internet adoption therefore affects local labor markets. For instance, the Internet made it possible to access a large amount of information on available jobs, vacancies, as well as company and career information, all at a low cost. These changes likely altered job search behavior by leading to a shift in job search methods, away from traditional methods towards increased use of Internet related search methods. These changes affect job search intensity, as well as the probability of success of the job-hunting process. Thanks to the Internet, job searchers can have access to a larger pool of available jobs and can therefore apply for more jobs at a faster rate. But does Internet job search actually make job seekers more likely to find a job and in the case of employed job seekers does it result in wage growth? Finally, does digitalization at the workplace affect the wage growth of employed individuals?

This paper assesses the impact of Internet job search on employment and wage growth focusing on Egypt for at least three reasons. Firstly, Internet adoption in Egypt has increased tremendously in recent years. Secondly, unemployment in Egypt is rife among the youth, so in light of the wellknown fact that it is precisely the younger cohorts that use the Internet the most, it is especially important to investigate whether Internet use could increase the employment prospects of unemployed Egyptians or lead to wage growth among those who are already employed. Finally, Egypt’s very large and fast growing population makes its labor market key for both regional development efforts and overall regional stability.

<mark>There is a growing body of academic literature on the impact of Internet job search on unemployment in the United States. The seminal work of Kuhn and Skuterud (2004) examined the impact of Internet job search on the employment prospects of the unemployed in the United States</mark> 2