CAIRO, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- The unemployment rate in Egypt declined to 11.3 percent by the end of 2017 compared to 11.9 percent three months earlier, the country's official statistics authority said in a report on Thursday.

"The unemployment rate declined to 11.3 percent in the last quarter of 2017 compared to 11.9 percent in the third quarter of the same year," said the report of the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS).

The unemployment rate in Egypt hit 12.7 percent in May 2016 and it gradually decreased to 12 percent by the third quarter of the year.

The CAPMAS report pointed out that the workforce in Egypt reached 29.272 million people by the end of 2017 while the number of those jobless hit 3.309 million, constituting 11.3 percent of the total workforce.

The country's total population inside and outside the country has reached 104.2 million, with over 94.8 million at home and some 9.4 million expatriates.