Algeria - People
Algeria has a very young population, which poses a growing challenge for the labor market and the education system. Employment opportunities for people born around the turn of the Century are limited by the much larger cohort born in the 1980s and 1990s. The very large number of people born since 2005 will face rather bleak prospects as they enter the labor force.
As of July 2018, Algeria’s population was estimated to total 41.7 million. The population was growing at an annual rate of 1.6 percent. More than 90 percent of the country’s population is concentrated along the Mediterranean coast, which constitutes only 12 percent of the country’s land area. Algeria's population in January 1990 was 25.1 million, of whom 12.4 million were female and almost 12.7 were male. The figure compared with 12 million recorded in the 1966 census, 8.7 million on the eve of the War of Independence in 1954, and 4 million at the turn of the century. During the first twenty years after independence in 1962, the population doubled. The United States government estimate of Algeria's population in 1993 was 27.4 million, and projections were that there would be 32.5 million people in the country by the year 2000.
Various French censuses conducted during the colonial period were inexact surveys relying on such techniques as counting tents and multiplying by six to determine the number of nomads. The surveys were enough, however, to paint a picture of a quickening rate of population growth, the average annual rate of increase rising from 0.5 percent between 1900 and 1910 to 2.7 percent between 1950 and 1955. During the period of hostilities that extended from 1954 to 1962, the population grew at a greatly reduced rate because of the number of people killed in the war. The exact number of deaths is not known; French officials estimated it at 350,000, but Algerians placed it at 1.5 million.
Algeria’s literacy rate is estimated at 69–70 percent, higher than in Morocco and Egypt but subpar by international standards. The breakdown by gender is 79 percent for males and 61 percent for females. A lag persists for women despite progress since independence in 1962. Education consumes one-quarter of the national budget. Algeria faces a shortage of teachers as a result of the doubling in the number of eligible children and young adults in the last 12 years. Education is free and officially compulsory for Algerians up to age 16, but actual enrollment falls far short of 100 percent. Enrollment drops off sharply from primary to secondary school. In fact, only about half the eligible population is enrolled in secondary school, which consists of two three-year cycles beginning at age 12. In addition, Algeria has 10 universities, seven university centers (centres universitaires), and several technical colleges. The primary language of school instruction is Arabic, but Berber-language instruction has been permitted since 2003, in part to ease reliance on foreign teachers but also in response to complaints about Arabization.
Although almost all Algerians are Berber in origin (not Arab), only a minority identify themselves as Berber, about 15% of the total population; these people live mostly in the mountainous region of Kabylie east of Algiers; the Berbers are also Muslim but identify with their Berber rather than Arab cultural heritage; Berbers have long agitated, sometimes violently, for autonomy; the government is unlikely to grant autonomy but has officially recognized Berber languages and introduced them into public schools.
For the first two thirds of the 20th century, Algeria's high fertility rate caused its population to grow rapidly. However, about a decade after independence from France in 1962, the total fertility rate fell dramatically from 7 children per woman in the 1970s to about 2.4 in 2000, slowing Algeria's population growth rate by the late 1980s. The lower fertility rate was mainly the result of women's rising age at first marriage (virtually all Algerian children being born in wedlock) and to a lesser extent the wider use of contraceptives. Later marriages and a preference for smaller families are attributed to increases in women's education and participation in the labor market; higher unemployment; and a shortage of housing forcing multiple generations to live together. The average woman's age at first marriage increased from about 19 in the mid-1950s to 24 in the mid-1970s to 30.5 in the late 1990s.
Algeria's fertility rate experienced an unexpected upturn in the early 2000s, as the average woman's age at first marriage dropped slightly. The reversal in fertility could represent a temporary fluctuation in marriage age or, less likely, a decrease in the steady rate of contraceptive use.
Thousands of Algerian peasants - mainly Berber men from the Kabylia region - faced with land dispossession and economic hardship under French rule migrated temporarily to France to work in manufacturing and mining during the first half of the 20th century. This movement accelerated during World War I, when Algerians filled in for French factory workers or served as soldiers. In the years following independence, low-skilled Algerian workers and Algerians who had supported the French (known as Harkis) emigrated en masse to France. Tighter French immigration rules and Algiers' decision to cease managing labor migration to France in the 1970s limited legal emigration largely to family reunification.
Not until Algeria's civil war in the 1990s did the country again experience substantial outmigration. Many Algerians legally entered Tunisia without visas claiming to be tourists and then stayed as workers. Other Algerians headed to Europe seeking asylum, although France imposed restrictions. Sub-Saharan African migrants came to Algeria after its civil war to work in agriculture and mining. In the 2000s, a wave of educated Algerians went abroad seeking skilled jobs in a wider range of destinations, increasing their presence in North America and Spain. At the same time, legal foreign workers principally from China and Egypt came to work in Algeria's construction and oil sectors. Illegal migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Malians, Nigeriens, and Gambians, continue to come to Algeria in search of work or to use it as a stepping stone to Libya and Europe.
Since 1975, Algeria also has been the main recipient of Sahrawi refugees from the ongoing conflict in Western Sahara. More than 1000,000 Sahrawis are estimated to be living in five refugee camps in southwestern Algeria near Tindouf.
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