GAZA, (PIC)
This year’s International Workers’ Day arrives as Gaza endures one of the darkest chapters in its modern history. Since October 2023, a relentless war has left neither the economy nor the labor market with more than the narrowest margins for survival. As destruction spreads and infrastructure collapses, hundreds of thousands of workers have been pushed out of production altogether transforming work from a basic right into a daily struggle for survival.
Data released by the General Federation of Palestinian Trade Unions indicates that the war has triggered an almost total collapse of Gaza’s economic structure. Approximately 550,000 people are now unemployed, representing nearly 38 percent of the total Palestinian labor force, while workers’ losses have surpassed $9 billion a stark measure of the scale of devastation inflicted on the local economy.
These figures cannot be separated from the physical destruction itself. Local estimates suggest that around 90 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, leaving nearly 70 million tons of rubble behind. Entire economic and social spaces have been reshaped, turning Gaza into vast zones where production has simply ceased to exist.
An economy of survival
Under these conditions, the meaning of work itself has changed.
In the Mawasi area of Khan Yunis, 30-year-old Younes Saleh now stands behind a small cart selling cups of boiled corn after losing his job at a private company in Rafah. The war, he says, did not only erase his employment it also took his home.
His former workplace now lies beyond what residents call the “yellow line,” areas seized by Israeli forces during the war and still inaccessible. According to the Ministry of Labor, nearly 37,000 commercial establishments have been completely destroyed, effectively wiping out tens of thousands of jobs overnight.
Nearby, Mohammed Al-Saqqa, 40, roams the ruins of a Khan Yunis neighborhood with his 13-year-old son Hassan, salvaging intact stones from collapsed buildings to sell. Before the war, he owned a sweets shop.
“I lost everything,” he says. “Now I work among the ruins just to secure an income for my family.”
Abdullah Hamad, 32, once worked in agriculture east of Khan Yunis. After his land and home were destroyed, he now sells vegetables from a makeshift cart. “Life here shows no mercy,” he says. “I take any work available just to feed my children.”
These stories reflect a forced transition from an organized economy to an economy of survival, where stable professions have been replaced by precarious, informal labor.
According to Palestinian labor unions, workers, the most vulnerable social group, have borne the heaviest burden of both the war and the 17-year blockade. With factories and workshops almost entirely shut down, incomes have vanished, pushing families into dependence on humanitarian aid.
The sectoral breakdown makes the depth of the crisis plain: an estimated 20,000 workers in transportation are idle, along with 40,000 in construction, 10,000 in tailoring, 35,000 in agriculture, 5,000 in tourism, 40,000 in metal industries, and 4,000 fishermen … an army of unemployment approaching half a million people.
Figures from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics deepen the picture of collapse: unemployment in Gaza reached about 68 percent during the war, while labor force participation dropped to 25 percent, down from 40 percent before October 2023, evidence that large segments of society have exited the labor market entirely.
Deep economic transformation
The crisis is even more severe among young people. Nearly 74 percent of youth are now outside education, employment, or training. Unemployment among university graduates has climbed to 79 percent, while among women it has reached an unprecedented 92 percent, reflecting a profound disintegration of Gaza’s economic foundations.
The consequences extend far beyond employment. Gaza’s Gross Domestic Product has contracted by 83–84 percent, leading United Nations estimates to conclude that decades of development have effectively been erased.
Economic specialists describe a situation of forced unemployment exceeding 90 percent in some assessments, accompanied by widespread reliance on humanitarian aid after more than 80 percent of the economic base was destroyed and productive projects came to a near-total halt.
Economist Dr. Amin Abu Aisheh warns that the war has fundamentally altered Gaza’s economic structure. Before the conflict, Gaza achieved partial self-sufficiency in certain goods-particularly vegetables-and even exported some production, helping support the trade balance. The war, however, has driven prices upward, reduced incomes, delayed payments, and widened structural deficits.
He adds that currency fluctuations and declining domestic production have raised import costs for traders, deepening dependence on foreign goods. Correcting the trade imbalance, he cautions, may take years, requiring policies that rebuild local production, especially in agriculture and livestock sectors.
At the same time, warnings are intensifying over the collapse of the private sector. Business leader Ali Al-Hayek notes that commercial and industrial activities face severe deterioration under blockade conditions, tightened restrictions on raw materials, and chronic electricity shortages factors that have crippled production across Gaza.
The collapse of the private sector, he warns, will further accelerate unemployment and poverty, calling for urgent international intervention to support economic recovery.
Forced professional adaptation
Across Gaza, survival has produced new forms of compelled adaptation.
Khaled Hajjaj, 28, an architect, now charges mobile phones using solar panels for a small fee after his office was destroyed. “I have no choice,” he says. “Any work that secures daily bread becomes necessary.”
In Rafah, brothers Ali and Hassan Abdel Aal recycle rubble from destroyed homes into construction materials for repair work, attempting to create income from the very destruction that erased their livelihoods.
Women have suffered compounded losses. Umm Shadi Qdeih, 47, says the sewing workshop she managed was completely destroyed, depriving her and dozens of female workers of their only source of income; an illustration of the deep social consequences of economic collapse, particularly for already vulnerable groups.
The crisis does not stop at Gaza’s borders. In the occupied West Bank, unemployment has risen to around 280,000 people by the end of 2025, compared to 129,000 before the war, with unemployment climbing to 28 percent following declines in construction, industry, and transport sectors.
Forced professional reinvention
These indicators point not to a temporary downturn but to a comprehensive breakdown of labor and production accompanied by widespread social fragmentation. As work becomes irregular, emergency-based activity rather than stable employment, society’s capacity for economic resilience steadily erodes amid the absence of any clear horizon for reconstruction or a return to normal life.
Under the weight of these realities, Gaza on International Workers’ Day stands as a concentrated model of an economy shaped by siege and war where the central question is no longer employment opportunities, but survival itself.
Work, once a foundation of dignity and stability, has been reduced to a fragile means of staying alive.