The unemployment rate in the Gaza Strip has risen to nearly 80 percent as a result of the war between Israel and Hamas that has been raging since October, according to a United Nations labor agency report released Friday.
The war has caused massive job losses, pushing Gaza’s unemployment rate to 79.1 percent, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimate.
Unemployment in the West Bank, which has also been rocked by the conflict, has reached 32 percent. The unemployment rate in both areas now stands at 50.8 percent.
Unemployment rates do not take into account those who have left the workforce because jobs are out of reach. Therefore, these figures are even higher than what the unemployment figures show, according to the assessment.
“Our new bulletin shows that the grim toll that the war in the Gaza Strip has taken on human lives, and the desperate humanitarian situation it has created, is accompanied by widespread destruction of economic activities and livelihoods,” said Ruba Jaradat, regional director of the ILO. for Arab states. “This worsens the suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and further endangers their safety and well-being.”
The Gaza Strip’s real gross domestic product (GDP) has shrunk by 83.5 percent. In the West Bank, it has fallen by 22.7 percent in the past eight months, according to ILO data. The real GDP of both areas has fallen by an average of 32.8 percent.
According to United Nations data, the unemployment rate in 2022 was approximately 46.6 percent.
The war began when the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 Israelis and taking about 250 hostages. Israeli forces retaliated with a military operation that killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials. Both counts include civilians and combatants.
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