On Thursday, Lebanon’s Central Administration of Statistics (CAS) and the International Labor Organization issued a report announcing that the official unemployment rate increased since the crisis.
“Lebanon’s unemployment rate increased from 11.4% in 2018-2019 to 29.6% in January 2022, indicating that almost one-third of the active labor force was unemployed in January 2022,” the report revealed.
It emphasized that the most alarming data is in the increasing growth in “underutilized labor,” which was 16.2% in 2018-2019 and jumped to 50.1% in January 2022.
Adding that the average monthly salaries of employees were reported at 2,300,000 LBP compared to 1,200,000 LBP in 2018-19, with the average salary of 3,800,000 LBP for employees with a degree.
Moreover, the number of women in managerial roles dropped by 2%, from 28.9% (2018-2019) to 26.7%.
The numbers also showed that the percentage of students enrolled in private educational institutions dropped from 47.8% to 36.9%. Similarly, the Lebanese population profiting from health insurance also dropped from 56% to 49% in the past 2-3 years.
Those numbers, issued just days before the 2022 elections, expose the country’s exacerbating economic crisis, which is not only affecting employment but also almost every aspect of the Lebanese population’s daily lives.
