Lebanon: The official unemployment rate has nearly tripled since the fall of 2019

Beirut – AFP: The official unemployment rate in Lebanon has risen nearly three times, in light of the economic collapse that is ravaging the country, according to a new survey conducted by the Lebanese government and the United Nations, whose results were published on Thursday.
The Central Administration of Statistics in Lebanon and the International Labor Organization said in a press statement that the unemployment rate in Lebanon rose from 11.4 percent in the period between 2018 and 2019 to 29.6 percent in January.
The study indicated that “nearly a third of the active labor force was unemployed” at the beginning of the year, noting that the unemployment rate among women is higher than it is among men.
According to the survey, which included a sample of 5,444 families from different governorates, “informal employment, that is, those that are not adequately covered by official arrangements and protection systems, now represents more than sixty percent of total employment in Lebanon.”
The survey found that about half of the workforce and potential workforce were “underutilized,” a term referring to unemployment, people who are available to work more hours than they actually do, or those who are not seeking work.
In light of the living crisis afflicting Lebanon and the high cost of transportation, employees in the public sector and in the security and military corps fail to come full-time to their work stations. Tens of thousands of workers in the private sector have lost their jobs or part of their sources of income. Many specialists and young people have chosen the migration route during the past two years. Since the fall of 2019, Lebanon has witnessed an unprecedented economic collapse that the World Bank has ranked among the worst in the world since the middle of the last century, with which the lira has lost more than ninety percent of its value against the dollar.
This is accompanied by political paralysis that prevents taking reform steps to limit the deterioration and improve the quality of life of the population, more than eighty percent of whom live below the poverty line.
According to a report issued yesterday by Olivier de Schutter, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights on Lebanon, “nine out of ten people find it difficult to obtain an income, and more than six out of ten would leave the country if they were able to do so. way.”
The United Nations held the “Lebanese state, including its central bank” responsible “for human rights violations, including the unnecessary impoverishment of the population, which resulted from this man-made crisis” and was “fully bypassable.”