Educated emigrate, unskilled immigrate

A professor at one of Lebanon’s universities recently paid a visit to the Canadian Embassy ­ he and his wife were to spend Christmas there, and he was inquiring about a visa. When he arrived, he found his entire class of 28 filling out forms, lining up for applications, and talking to embassy officials.
All were computer-science students hoping to find work
in Canada.
According to some official studies, 895,000 people left Lebanon between 1975 and 1990, due in large part to the civil war. It is estimated that a comparable number have also emigrated in the decade since the war.
Most cite a lack of employment opportunities here as the main reason for leaving. Unemployment rates in Lebanon are rising for both skilled and unskilled workers, especially among the young. In the past, Lebanese emigrants were generally unskilled workers who could not find employment here, while the skilled and educated remained. But now Lebanon is losing its potentially most productive people because the economy is not creating the jobs to retain them.
The “brain drain” has been well documented during the past three years of the recession, while rising unemployment rates have been attributed to slow economic growth and the previous government’s austerity measures. But how high is the unemployment rate in Lebanon?
Official unemployment statistics in a country where no census has been conducted for more than half a century are simply not compiled on a regular basis.
In some European countries, unemployment is measured by the number of people claiming benefits, and is published regularly. No such benefits system exists in Lebanon, and measuring the unemployment level is a laborious job.
Nor can the National Social Security Fund provide an accurate estimate of the unemployment level as, said NSSF financial manager Emile Khoury, “about 350,000 people are registered in Social Security now. It has always fluctuated between 300,000 and 400,000.”
The government considers about 34 percent of a population of 3.5 million to be of age for economic activity. This suggests that many workers remain unregistered, possibly a result of the prohibitively high required Social Security contributions that can reach 35.5 percent of the salary for employers.
In any case, many experts agree that the few statistics that are available almost certainly underestimate the real unemployment level.
The most recent official studies of unemployment in Lebanon date to 1997, when the Central Administration for Statistics conducted a national survey of living conditions and household incomes and put the unemployment rate at 8.5 percent.
But the survey was not sophisticated enough to identify the various manifestations of underemployment, effectively undermining the findings.
Economist Toufic Gaspard, who is writing a book about the history of the Lebanese economy, gave a simple example at a recent unemployment seminar held by the Family Planning Association: “If a piece of land is productive enough to occupy two people for a full day, but has five people working on it, then there is unemployment.”
Gaspard said that if part-time and seasonal employees ­ who according to official estimates make up 16 percent of all workers ­ and some students were included in the statistics, the unemployment rate in 1997 would have been at least 15-20 percent.
Unemployment is almost certainly much higher now ­ at least 20-25 percent according to Gaspard, and even the Ministry of Labor hinted last year that the rate could be this high.
Gaspard reminded participants that working-age Lebanese have emigrated even during times of prosperity. The country’s population fell by an estimated 10,000 in the relatively prosperous period of 1970-74 as a result of emigration.
Gaspard’s interpretation of these statistics: the Lebanese economy never created enough job opportunities, but emigration historically siphoned off the excess labor. The country never noticed that there was an unemployment problem, and thus never tried to create more jobs.
Awareness of the problem has grown as it has become more difficult to emigrate. Many Western countries are increasingly stringent with their visas, and other common destinations like West Africa are in political turmoil.
Gaspard claimed that unemployment in Lebanon was a product of the structure and institutions of the economy.
A country so small lacks the resources to create large numbers of jobs. And the resources that are available are concentrated in the capital and a handful of small cities, while communications networks between these hubs and the rest of the economy are underdeveloped.
Resources have historically gone into the service and trade sectors ­ the top two employers in Lebanon ­ to the neglect of potentially bigger job providers such as manufacturing.
The National Recruitment Office, a public department set up to study the labor market, conducted a survey in 1996-97 that suggested a mismatch between the jobs the economy creates and the qualities working-age Lebanese possess.
The survey found that whereas 42.7 percent of people who applied to the department to help them find jobs held university degrees, only 19.4 percent of the employers who applied to the office looking for recruits wanted graduates.
Moreover, there was a mismatch between the types of degrees held and those demanded by employers. Only 5 percent of employers who applied to the office looking for graduates requested arts qualifications, whereas 38.5 percent of graduates who applied held arts degrees.
The Order of Engineers said that almost one-third of engineers in Lebanon are now unemployed. Lebanon has a serious shortage of nurses and even nursing courses. There are five doctors for every nurse in Lebanon ­ that ratio ought to be reversed.
At the same time that Lebanon has become a net exporter of educated labor, it has become a net importer of unskilled labor.
Estimates for the number of migrant workers in Lebanon vary wildly. Many come from Syria or Egypt, typically working in construction or as street venders. Others may be Asian or African immigrants who often take work as domestic help.
These workers have to some extent replaced Lebanese in very low-income occupations, as they are willing to accept lower earnings. However, because the bulk of their earnings are not spent here but sent home as remittances, they represent a loss for the Lebanese economy.