07 November 2006
BEIRUT: The 2004 National Survey of Household Living Conditions, released Monday at a news conference in Downtown Beirut, offers a uniquely thorough portrait of Lebanon's labor demographics. Produced by the Social Affairs Ministry, the Central Administration for Statistics and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the report weighs in at a hefty 448 pages - and for lovers of statistics, it has no shortage of gems.
"This study places a great importance on both the national and regional level," said Maral Tutelian Gidanian, director-general of the Central Administration for Statistics. "[This should] enable it to be the basis for assessing economic and social matters - especially those concerning families' living conditions - and helping to draw up development plans that would achieve social equality."
Joining Tutelian Gidanian at the news conference to introduce the report were the UNDP's Lebanon representative, Mona Hamman, and Social Affairs Minister Nayla Mouawad. The three agreed that this report, along with several additional ones the agencies hope to release in the near future, represented a new caliber of national economic research
The forthcoming reports, said Hamman, "will take into consideration a number of indicators related to poverty and low incomes on a scientific and objective basis, for the first time in the history of the country."
The report's economic analysis provides several insights into the workforce, including the segment of it that is unemployed. Nationwide, it claims, unemployment among those of working age is 8 percent.
According to the study, a fifth of unemployed workers have at least a bachelor's degree; 34 percent have been searching for a job for at least a year. Nearly half of Lebanon's unemployed are from Mount Lebanon.
Among Lebanon's employed workers, it adds, nearly a third have only an elementary school education. Beirut has by far the highest rate of economic activity in the country, with 56.4 percent of the working-age population employed in some form. In the Bekaa, only 40 percent of this population is economically active.
Overall, Lebanon's men are markedly more active in the formal economy than women. Barely a fifth of all women in Lebanon fall into the "economically active" category, versus 69 percent of men. The report notes with interest, though, that women's economic activity peaks at 37 percent, when they are in their late 20s. Men, by contrast, reach their pinnacle of economic activity a decade later, when they are between 35 and 39 years of age.
Nearly half of Lebanon's workers, it says, are employed in the service sector. Roughly a quarter are involved in trade; 9 percent work in construction and only 8 percent in agriculture.
