Unemployment rate 80% in Gaza: UN
GENEVA: The war in Gaza has seen the unemployment rate in the besieged Palestinian territory surge to nearly 80 percent, the United Nations said Friday.
DEIR EL-BALAH: A girl carries folded mattresses above her head as she walks with other displaced people fleeing from the eastern parts of Deir el-Balah to the city centre in the central Gaza Strip on June 8, 2024.—AFP.
The UN’s labor agency said the Zionist entity war on Gaza had “caused loss of jobs and livelihoods on a massive scale”, while gross domestic product has also plunged. Since the war began in October last year, “the unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip has reached a staggering 79.1 percent”, the International Labour Organization said, citing a new brief by the ILO and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. In the West Bank, unemployment has reached 32 percent, the ILO added.
The average unemployment rate across the West Bank and Gaza combined stood at 50.8 percent, it said. However, these figures “do not account for those who have left the labor force altogether as job prospects proved unattainable”, it said. “The actual number of those who have lost their jobs is therefore even higher than what the unemployment figures suggest.”
Zionist entity’s military offensive has killed at least 36,731 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Gaza. The ILO said real GDP had contracted by 83.5 percent in the Gaza Strip and by 22.7 percent in the West Bank over the past eight months. “Our new bulletin shows that the grim toll the war in the Gaza Strip has taken on human lives, and the desperate humanitarian situation it has caused, are accompanied by widespread devastation of economic activities and livelihoods,” said Ruba Jaradat, the ILO regional director for Arab states. The ILO said that in the Gaza Strip almost all private sector establishments “have either completely ceased or significantly reduced production”, with the sector shedding 85.8 percent of its production value - equivalent to $810 million - during the first four months of the war. Gaza’s economy now represents 4.1 percent of the total Palestinian economy, down from 16.7 percent before the war.
The unemployment update comes as the ILO holds its annual International Labour Conference in Geneva from June 3-14. “In the wake of the horrific Hamas-led atrocities against Zionist entity and the ensuing relentless war waged by Zionist entity, the labor market in Gaza has literally collapsed,” ILO chief Gilbert F Houngbo said during the conference on Thursday. “Gaza is in ruins. Livelihoods are shattered and work is scarce. Labor rights have been decimated. “This has been the hardest year for Palestinian workers since 1967. Never before has the situation been this bleak.”
Houngbo called for a job-rich and rights-driven early recovery even while the humanitarian response to the war is still unfolding, saying job creation and decent work out to be at the heart of rebuilding infrastructure and services. “Of course, none of this will be possible without an end to the current war and the release of all hostages,” the former Togolese prime minister added.
Founded in 1919, the ILO has 187 member states, which are, uniquely in the UN system, represented equally by governments, employers and workers. – AFP.
