Step into almost any café or shared workspace in Beirut and a particular scene repeats itself: young professionals working for economies they may never see. Screens glow with design drafts, code repositories, and contract negotiations with clients in Berlin, Dubai, Toronto—anywhere but here. They are not chasing slogans about resilience; they are trying to stay one invoice ahead of a currency that erases value overnight. These are the Lebanese youth refusing to wait for a state that has abdicated its role in their future.

Lebanon’s youth unemployment rate (ages 15-24) surged from 23 percent in 2018 to 47.8 percent by 2022, according to estimates from the International Labor Organization (ILO) and Lebanon’s Central Administration of Statistics (CAS), a rate that nearly doubled in just four years. It is not a shortage of will that holds them back, but the absence of an economy capable of supporting them. A generation more globally connected than any before it has been reduced to refreshing buffering pages—an everyday reminder of a state that cannot deliver even the most basic infrastructure.

A demographic advantage turned economic strain

Sometimes described as Lebanon’s greatest asset, its youth have become the country’s unkept promise. According to the ILO’s 2024 report, youth aged 15-24 comprise one of Lebanon’s largest and most affected demographic cohorts. Every departure chips away at what remains of that promise. The airports are crowded with one-way ambition: engineers, designers, doctors, all in search of opportunities elsewhere.

But the costs cut deeper. Today Lebanon’s overall employment-to-population ratio has collapsed alongside youth unemployment and now sits at just 30.6 percent down from 43.3 percent only a few years prior according to a 2022 survey conducted by the ILO and CAS. Informality, meanwhile, has become the new rule: the share of informal workers grew from 55 percent in 2018 to more than 62 percent in 2022, according to The Policy Initiative’s 2024 report on Lebanon’s changing workforce.

When degrees don’t translate into jobs

On the surface, Lebanon boasts a stream of university graduates. Yet when these young people enter the job market, they find themselves adrift in a widening skills gap. According to a 2023 survey conducted by World Bank and Forward MENA, the educational arm of Beirut Digital District, on 82 digital and tech companies, 88 percent are actively recruiting full-time staff but cannot find the right talent, while 64 percent are specifically seeking software developers and falling short. The challenge isn’t limited to technical know-how: high demand also exists in digital marketing, UI/UX design—or the process of creating user-friendly and appealing

products—and social media skills, with employers now equally prioritizing ‘soft’ abilities such as teamwork, adaptability, and emotional intelligence.

Worryingly, 76 percent of surveyed companies identify a persistent mismatch between what students learn and what jobs actually require. This disconnect means that businesses face extra costs re-training new hires to fill basic manpower needs, while fresh graduates often find themselves underprepared for the evolving demands of the market.

The roots of this problem run deep. As confirmed by a 2023 World Bank report and additional research by Al Safa News, over 31 percent of Lebanese companies are unable to find suitable talent at all, while three-quarters of employers believe the skills gap is growing. The collapse of thousands of businesses since 2019, combined with an accelerating exodus of young skilled workers, has further depleted local expertise, especially in high-demand sectors like tech, healthcare, and engineering.

Meanwhile, Lebanon’s educational system still privileges rote academics over practical training. As a result, too many graduates leave university without the coding, critical thinking, or digital skills needed to thrive. Sector initiatives such as the World Bank and Forward MENA’s Skilling Up Lebanon program, which has delivered digital and gig economy training to thousands offer hope by directly linking youth to in-demand work and employer-valued certification. But without systemic reform, ambitious young people may remain locked out of the job market, or forced abroad to find roles that match their abilities.

Outdated laws in a freelance economy

Lebanon’s labor framework still belongs to a world before Wi-Fi: written for office hours, not remote contracts; for employers, not platforms. Yet today, thousands of young professionals work across borders, billing in dollars, earning in instability, living without protection.

A 2022 policy brief by The Policy Initiative titled “Lebanon’s ‘Missing Middle’: Online Delivery Workers Under Precarious Conditions,” finds that platform-based workers, from delivery drivers to freelancers, occupy a legal grey zone, excluded from both labor protections and social insurance. The report highlights how the country’s 1946 Labor Code makes no mention of independent or digital workers, forcing them into precarious “consultancy” contracts that deny them basic rights or benefits.

The ILO’s 2025 rapid assessment echoes this picture, warning that Lebanon’s private-sector labor market remains “severely disrupted,” with widespread business closures, income losses, and surging informality, particularly among youth. Together, these findings expose the legal vacuum expanding beneath the country’s most dynamic workforce; one that the state still pretends not to see.

Reform, meanwhile, drags on. Ministries overlap, committees meet, drafts circulate: and nothing changes. Another year of potential quietly dissolves into paperwork.

Education, law, and trust

If Lebanon truly wants to turn its youth bulge into an asset, reform must begin where hope hasn’t yet expired: in classrooms, in contracts, and in trust.

As per the report of the Ministry of Education and UNESCO, Lebanon recently launched the “Digital Transformation Strategy 2025: Reimagining Learning in Lebanon,” an ambitious initiative to infuse artificial intelligence (AI) and modern technology into learning and promote data-driven governance in schools. However, as noted by the Asfari Institute, a UK-based grant making charity, and World Bank, the public-school curriculum, still based on a 1997 framework, remains outdated and inadequate for 21st-century job markets.

Efforts by international agencies, including “Skilling Up Lebanon” by Forward MENA, the World Bank and UNICEF, seek to bridge the gap between academic learning and real digital skills. Nevertheless, challenges such as poor internet infrastructure, persistent digital divides, and insufficient teacher training continue to impede systemic change.

Beyond education reform, Lebanon has also taken long-overdue steps to update its labor market framework. As per a 2025 Asfari Institute policy note, Lebanon adopted landmark amendments to its Labor Law (Articles 1, 2, and 12) in May 2025, recognizing remote and part-time work by expanding the definition of “worker” and modernizing employment contracts to protect a broader range of flexible arrangements. The labor code now formally extends protection to freelance and platform-based work, with recent increases in social security coverage and an official minimum wage of LBP 18,000,000 per month (approximately $200 USD) as of August 2025.

Despite these encouraging legal updates, Lebanon’s reform landscape remains deeply uneven. Yet as per the assessment in the 3RF Reform and Recovery Framework, the deficit of true alignment persists: private sector dynamism is stymied by political instability and inadequate coordination among state, civil society, and business actors. Ongoing crises, from economic collapse to regional conflict, routinely derail even the best-designed reform programs and fuel a crisis of trust in public institutions.

Lebanon’s ability to sustain reform depends on continued international support from the likes of the World Bank, UNICEF, and UNESCO, who increasingly step in to fill funding and governance gaps, but meaningful progress ultimately hinges on the government’s capacity for implementation.

A question Lebanon can no longer postpone

Lebanon suffers from is not a deficit of youth or ambition, but a deficit of alignment. The private sector is ready, the talent is waiting, and the bridge between them is still missing.

Lebanon’s youth are already integrated into the global digital economy; they did not wait for domestic institutions to enable their participation. From cafés, co-working spaces, and family homes, they produce software, media, and services that circulate far beyond the country’s

borders, generating value in ecosystems that hardly acknowledge the states that failed to support them.

The issue is not simply one of departure or “brain drain,” but of structural compulsion. Their exit—physical or economic—was not a matter of preference but of necessity. Lebanon does not suffer from a shortage of skilled or ambitious people; it suffers from political and economic systems unable or unwilling to absorb their capabilities. The result is a persistent mismatch between human capital and national capacity, with long-term consequences for the country’s competitiveness, institutional legitimacy, and social cohesion.