Around half of the Lebanese population have become unemployed, caretaker Labor Minister Lamia Yammine announced during the 47th Arab Labor Conference on Monday.
“Nearly half of the Lebanese have become unemployed, and the Ministry of Labor is addressing this phenomenon with the insurance system against unemployment and securing the rights of those who have been dismissed from work,” Yammine said.
This comes around two years after Lebanon began to spiral down an economic crisis that the World Bank has deemed one of the worst since the 1850s.
Lebanon refuses to succumb to the crisis, Yammine stressed, calling upon Arab nations to help it return to “its previous prosperity and its role in creating events and exporting hope,” and “preserve its civilized and human identity.”
The economic meltdown, exacerbated by the pandemic, has pushed many local businesses to reduce their staff or to close down entirely, leaving their former employees jobless in a collapsing market.
This prompted a considerable amount of skilled individuals to migrate to freelance work in the hope of receiving payments in scarce foreign currency from international clients.
This led to Lebanon becoming the leading country in terms of the share of freelancers in the world, according to a recent report.
However, as the crisis continues to expand and tear down more sectors and industries, including the telecommunications and power sectors, the hopes of remote workers are also dwindling while numerous local workers struggle to make ends meet.
