Hundreds of civil servants protested Monday in front of Egypt’s Cabinet, demanding wage increases to cope with rising prices and inflation.

Police barred the protesters, who work for Egypt’s Tax Agency, from nearing the Cabinet building or the nearby labor union, at times lifting metal barricades to push back against the crowd.

“Where is social justice?” about 500 protesters chanted. One banner read, “The oldest tax agency is starving to death.”

Egypt has seen its worst labor unrest in decades, with several hundred strikes in the past year. The biggest have been in the northern city of Mahalla el-Kobra, where textile workers went on strike last year and again in September to protest low wages and soaring inflation.

In September, the World Bank ranked Egypt as the world’s most improved economy for investors in 2007, helped by wide-ranging economic reforms. The country has had an average growth rate of 7.2 percent for the last three years, double what it had been.

But government officials have acknowledged in recent months that the improving economy has not trickled down to the majority of Egypt’s 77 million people.

Inflation soared to 12 percent from December 2006 to September, up from a low of 3.4 percent just a year before. The government says it now stands around 8 percent, though independent economists put the real rate at about twice that.

At least 200 instances of labor strikes and protests took place in 2006, according to the Center for Trade and Union Services, a non-governmental organization.

The government has taken a relatively softer stance with workers than it generally does with activists demanding more democracy and freedom.

Unemployment remains officially at 12 percent, and the poverty level more than 20 percent, according to the World Bank.

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Associated Press Writer Nadia Abou el-Magd contributed to this report