One in five Tunisians is aged 15-24 (as compared with around 1 in 10 in Britain) and youth unemployment is at least 30%. Joblessness is particularly high among university graduates. That is a phenomenon common to many Arab countries as a growing graduate population combines with a decline in the state's ability to provide public sector jobs, while private sectors remain underdeveloped.

The result is a huge cohort of young people with too much time and not enough money. In Algeria, they are known as the "hittists", meaning the people who lean against walls – an emblem of bored, disaffected youth. Members of this generation also have ways of sharing information online that, while sometimes disrupted by state censorship, cannot be entirely silenced. They are potentially a vast source of political upheaval.