This report presents the findings from a study carried out as part of a larger initiative to assess the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on labour markets in the Arab States. The International Labour Organization (ILO) led the initiative in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the Dan-ish Refugee Council (DRC), Save the Children International, and Mercy Corps. Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research (Fafo) provided the conceptual and technical design for the initia-tive. The studies under the initiative are designed as panel studies, i.e. the first studies on each country act as baselines for follow-up studies that will be conducted regularly over the coming months to assess the longer-term impacts of the pandemic, and associated policy measures, on the labour markets. Hence, this first study on Lebanon primarily presents baseline characteristics of the workers and enterprises in our sample population, in addition to assessing the immediate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on these workers and enterprises.

This report presents the results from a rapid assessment of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on workers and enterprises in Lebanon. The objective of the assessment is to shed light on some of the pressing issues and concerns that workers, particularly the most vulnerable, are facing today—in terms of employment, source of income, current economic conditions, and prospects for the immediate future. Additionally, the assessment addresses the effects of the pandemic on small-scale businesses, their coping and adaptation strategies and their business prospects  including the implications for workers.