Series information
The Economic Research Forum (ERF) in cooperation with the Jordanian Department of Statistics (DOS) has carried out the Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey (JLMPS) during the years 2010, 2016, and 2025. The series also includes five waves in Egypt (ELMPS 1998, 2006, 2012, 2018 and 2023), one wave in Tunisia (TLMPS 2014) and one wave in Sudan (SLMPS 2022).
Abstract
As part of its series of comprehensive labor market panel surveys, the Economic Research Forum (ERF) had conducted a survey in Jordan in 2010, the Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey of 2010 (JLMPS 2010), followed by a new wave after six years (JLMPS 2016). The JLMPS 2025 thus comes at an opportune time to allow for an in-depth assessment of critical social and economic developments in Jordan's recent history.
The JLMPS is part of a series of labor market panel surveys carried out by ERF in several Arab countries since 1998 and whose microdata are available for public use through the ERF data portal. These surveys have, so far, been carried out in Egypt (1998, 2006, 2012, 2018, 2023), Jordan (2010, 2016, 2025), Tunisia (2014), and Sudan (2022). The ERF Labor Market Panel Surveys (LMPSs) are carried out in cooperation with the national statistical office of each country. Accordingly, the JLMPS 2025 was carried out in cooperation with the Jordanian Department of Statistics (DoS), which had preserved the personally identifiable information (PII) of the sample from the previous wave, supplied a refresher sample based on the design provided by ERF researchers, and implemented all data collection activities using tablets.
As part of a longitudinal survey, the 2025 wave of JLMPS was designed to follow an existing population over time. However, the 2025 wave was also designed to capture the implications of the large refugee and migrant worker populations in Jordan. To this end, the survey design team decided to add a large refresher sample of approximately 3,000 households that over-sampled neighborhoods in Jordan that had high proportions of non-Jordanian households, including refugee camps, as ascertained by the 2015 Population Census.
This third wave of the JLMPS questionnaire builds on the questionnaires used in previous waves, which will facilitate data comparability. The JLMPS 2025 covers topics such as parental background, education, housing, access to services, residential mobility, migration and remittances, time use, marriage patterns and costs, fertility, women's decision making and empowerment, job dynamics, savings and borrowing behavior, the operation of household enterprises and farms, besides the usual focus on employment, unemployment and earnings in typical labor force surveys. The JLMPS 2025 also provides information on health, gender role attitudes, food security, and specific questions on vulnerability, coping strategies and access to social safety net programs. Specific questions on the green economy, the digital/gig economy, and skills were added for 2025, which have important labor market and policy implications for Jordan. A full 24-hour time use diary for adolescents and adults aged ten and older is included in the time use module, in addition to a shorter summary version for children aged 6 to 9.
In addition to the survey's panel design, which permits the study of various phenomena over time, the survey also contains a large number of retrospective questions about the timing of major life events such as education, residential mobility, jobs, marriage and fertility. The survey provides detailed information about place of birth and subsequent residence, as well information about schools and universities attended at various stages of an individual's trajectory, which permit the individual records to be linked to information from other data sources about the geographic context in which the individual lived and the educational institutions s/he attended.
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For more information on the JLMPS series, see:
Krafft, Caroline, Ragui Assaad, and Sara Ragab. 2026. “Introducing the Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey 2025.” Economic Research Forum Working Paper Series (Forthcoming).
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We acknowledge the financial support of the European Union, the International Labour Organization (ILO) through the EU-Madad funded project 'Towards an inclusive national social protection system and accelerating decent job opportunities for Syrians and vulnerable Jordanians,' the World Bank, UNICEF, UN Women, and the International Growth Centre (IGC).