Finding a job in Yemen no longer necessarily means being able to support a family or secure the minimum requirements of life. After more than a decade of war and economic collapse, millions of Yemenis are caught between unemployment and declining job opportunities.

Those who still have jobs face an equally harsh reality: low wages, delayed salary payments, reduced working hours, and lack of protection in increasingly arduous work environments.

Complaints among daily wage workers are growing over the decline in business and the suspension of many activities that used to provide them with regular income opportunities, at a time when competition for limited work has become more intense. Even those who succeed in finding a job cannot guarantee a steady income or a wage sufficient to cover their family's basic needs.

Since after the Eid al-Adha holiday about two months ago, Abdul Hakim Mohammed has been unable to find work except for a few days, even though he is a multi-skilled worker from the Muqatra district of Lahj governorate (southwest). He moves between there and Aden city looking for work in agriculture, construction, or painting.

Construction workers in Yemen spend long days waiting for a limited employment opportunity (AFP)

Mohammed tells Asharq Al-Awsat that those who need daily wage workers for craft tasks have become more keen on negotiating wages, noting that the expansion of unemployment forces workers to accept any amount, especially after the economic downturn that has worsened in recent months.

Economic indicators and UN reports confirm the suffering of tens of thousands of Yemeni workers. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network stated that the official unemployment rate in Yemen is about 17 percent of the total labor force.

The agricultural sector has been affected

Yemen is among the countries with the lowest economic participation rates globally, with only about a third of the working-age population engaging in economic activity, due to the exhausted economy's inability to absorb more labor.

Yemeni workers face harsh conditions amid deteriorating living standards and low wages (Reuters)

Conditions are no better in rural areas, where farmers and agricultural workers face many challenges due to limited access to agricultural land, water sources, and production inputs. This has affected agricultural output, reduced seasonal job opportunities, and diminished the income of rural families who rely mainly on agriculture and livestock.

Landowners in Lahj and Taiz find it difficult to pay appropriate wages to agricultural workers, given their fears that the agricultural season, which depends on rainwater, may not be viable. They cannot guarantee its sustainability or that floods will not wash away soil and crops amid the climate disruptions the country has experienced for years.

Radwan al-Sharjabi, an employee at a commercial company and the son of a farmer in the Shamaiteen district of Taiz (southwest), says he is forced to help his father pay agricultural workers after his father was unable to do so, hoping that the grain harvest at the end of the season will be enough to help the family achieve self-sufficiency.

Al-Sharjabi tells Asharq Al-Awsat that he provides this assistance to his father to save him the trouble of having to look for work to provide food during the winter, on the one hand, and on the other hand, his desire to enable some unemployed workers in his village to have a job opportunity, albeit limited.

A construction worker performs maintenance work on an old building in the city of Shibam, eastern Yemen (Getty - Archive)

UN network estimates indicate that poor families in cities have become heavily dependent on the informal sector, such as construction, transportation, small trade, and crafts. However, the decline in economic activity has led to intensified competition for these jobs, a decrease in the number of available workdays, and a reduction in the income a worker can earn in a month.

Migration to construction

Unemployment and low wages in Yemen are among the repercussions of a protracted economic crisis caused by the ongoing war for more than ten years, which has led to widespread paralysis of economic activities, closure of thousands of enterprises, decline in investments, suspension of salaries for hundreds of thousands of employees, as well as destruction of infrastructure and disruption of productive sectors that used to employ large numbers of workers.

Yemeni economic researcher Mohammed al-Maqtari believes that the Yemeni crisis and the war have struck the construction and building sector, which is the largest sector employing daily wage workers, thereby harming the largest segment of Yemeni workers, in his estimation.

On the sidewalks of streets in Yemen, gatherings called 'worker auctions' have sprung up (local media)

He noted in his interview with Asharq Al-Awsat that this sector has absorbed hundreds of thousands of new entrants due to deteriorating living conditions, suspension of salaries, and layoffs of thousands of workers from enterprises that closed because of the crisis or reduced their workforce, which has further compounded the reasons for lowering wages in the sector.

The labor crisis in Yemen is no longer limited to high unemployment rates; it has come to affect the quality of work itself. Work no longer guarantees adequate income, does not provide a safe environment, and does not protect the worker from falling into the poverty cycle.

The UN-sponsored truce has not had a tangible impact on the income sources of most Yemeni families. The economy continued to suffer from contraction, investments kept declining, and job opportunities remained limited across various sectors.

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