550,000 unemployed
InfoPro survey shows

One third of private sector

jobs have been lost

The unemployment rate has reached 30 percent, according to surveys and estimations by InfoPro Research.

One fifth of companies have closed since the beginning of 2019.

Nearly 18 percent of companies have ceased or suspended their operations, half of them in 2020.

At the beginning of 2019, the number of unemployed people was estimated at 200,000 by the Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), or 11 percent of a workforce of 1.8 million. Since that date, InfoPro’s surveys show that an estimated additional 350,000 people out of 1.15 million working in the private sector have lost their jobs due to the economic recession, protests, and the Covid-19 pandemic. This number includes 130,000 jobs lost in 2020 up to now.

The overall job losses so far represent one third of all private sector jobs.

The total number of the unemployed has reached 550,000 or 30 percent of a total labor force of 1.8 million.

The fragility of the private sector started to markedly materialize from the beginning of 2019, with companies reducing their overheads and number of employees, and lowering salaries. By October 17, most companies had already depleted their resources, and many had lost their ability to resist the crisis, contrary to the situation in previous security or economic emergencies during the past 25 years.

InfoPro Research – part of the same group as Lebanon Opportunities, has undertaken three surveys (November 2019, January 2020, and June 2020) on the impact of the crises on jobs and business performance. The last survey was executed during the second week of June 2020 with a sample of 500 companies, represented and weighted according to region, size, and sector.