By TOVAH LAZAROFF
According to a study fromthe United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees, the number of jobless Palestinians is up to 25 percent.
Palestinian unemployment went up in the second half of 2010, according to a study published Wednesday by the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees.
The economic pictures painted by figures from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics challenges the conventional pictures of a flourishing West Bank economy, UNRWA said in a press release it issued to the media.
“Research shows that in the second half of 2010, unemployment grew much faster than employment, and the purchasing power of average working people’s wages continued to decline in the face of persistently high unemployment rates and consumer price inflation,” it noted.
“These trends disproportionately affected refugees,” it said.
According to the report, Palestinian unemployment in the West Bank and east Jerusalem rose from 21.7% of the overall labor force in the first half of 2010 to 25% in the second half of the year. In the second half of 2009, 23.6% of the work force was unemployed.