Salaries have risen but are
still below pre-crisis levels

Pay in fresh dollars is gaining ground

Companies continue their upward adjustment of salaries. A survey undertaken this summer by InfoPro Research and published in the latest issue of Lebanon Opportunities has shown that almost two thirds of businesses increased salaries by 40 percent on average in 2021 while the planned average pay raise for the current year was just 13 percent as planned by a little more than half of the companies.

Despite the adjustments, the current salary, in terms of fresh dollars, is worth a little more than the third of the salary prior to the financial crisis that started in 2019, according to the survey which was conducted in Greater Beirut in June-July 2022. The pay raise, when translated into fresh dollars, doesn’t reflect the same rate of decrease in purchasing power since some of the salary increases are in the continuously depreciating lira. Businesses are paying in various combinations of dollar, lollar, and lira. Around 60 percent of the surveyed companies pay their salaries partially or fully in fresh dollars.

Besides currency depreciation, the pay cuts that occurred at the beginning of the crisis have also contributed to widening the gap between current and pre-crisis salaries. Between 2019 and June 2020, around 56 percent of companies reduced the salaries of their employees by an average of 47 percent, according to an earlier InfoPro survey published in June 2020.