Lebanon AI Job Risk 2026: Which of 1.58 Million Workers Are Most Exposed?

The most AI-exposed occupations in Lebanon (2019 baseline)

Lebanon's 2019 occupation profile reflected a service-oriented economy anchored in Beirut's banking sector, tourism cluster, and a significant knowledge-work professional class. The country had one of the highest rates of university-educated workers in the Arab world, a legacy of Lebanon's strong private university sector (American University of Beirut, Lebanese American University, Saint Joseph University). This translated directly into a relatively high professional share at 15.86% - above most regional peers at equivalent income levels.

Clerical support workers score 8.5/10 AI exposure across 68,500 workers. Professionals score 6.5/10 across 251,300 workers. Managers score 5.5/10 across 109,000 workers (6.88% - an elevated manager share reflecting Lebanon's private enterprise culture and large family business sector). Technicians score 5.5/10 across 78,300 workers. Together the four highest-exposure groups represent approximately 507,000 workers - 32% of Lebanon's 2019 formal workforce.

Lebanon's economic collapse and the AI transition

The Lebanon in 2026 is not the Lebanon that CAS measured in 2019. Understanding the AI exposure figures requires understanding what happened to each occupation group after the data was collected. Lebanon's banking crisis began in October 2019, within weeks of the survey's reference period. By 2020, depositors could not withdraw savings, the Lebanese pound had lost 90% of its value, and the formal economy - which generated the 1.58 million employment records in the survey - was contracting rapidly.

The professional class that scored 6.5/10 AI exposure in 2019 was among the most mobile. Lebanese doctors, engineers, software developers, and finance professionals began leaving immediately - first to Gulf states (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar), then to France, Canada, and the United States. The Lebanese Medical Association estimated that more than 1,800 doctors left Lebanon between 2019 and 2022 alone. The IT sector, which represented a significant share of the 251,000 professionals, relocated largely to Cyprus, UAE, and Canada. Clerks employed in Lebanon's once-prominent banking sector faced a different fate: many were made redundant as banks imposed capital controls and downsized. The 68,500 clerical workers in the 2019 data are now a much smaller group.

This creates an unusual situation for AI risk analysis. The occupations that score highest for AI exposure in 2019 - professionals and clerical workers - have seen the largest absolute workforce reductions through emigration and layoffs, not through AI substitution. In practice, Lebanon has experienced a forced occupational restructuring driven by economic collapse that superficially resembles what AI disruption might eventually produce elsewhere - high-exposure workers exiting the formal economy, leaving behind lower-exposure manual and physical workers as a larger share of the remaining labour force.

The safest jobs from AI in Lebanon

Lebanon's low-exposure occupation groups are anchored by craft workers and elementary occupations. Craft and related trades workers score 2.5/10 across 263,700 workers (16.64% of 2019 workforce) - the second-largest occupation group. Elementary occupations score 2.0/10 across 241,800 workers (15.26%). Plant and machine operators score 3.0/10 across 140,800 workers (8.88%). The armed forces score 2.5/10 across 71,100 workers (4.49%) - Lebanon's military is one of the more significant formal employers that has remained relatively stable through the crisis.

Construction workers, mechanics, electricians, and plumbers (the craft group) face low AI exposure precisely because their work requires physical adaptability, on-site judgment, and manual dexterity that AI cannot yet replicate. In Lebanon's case, the construction sector has remained one of the more resilient formal employment sectors partly because informal Syrian and Palestinian labour has sustained construction activity even as formal employment collapsed elsewhere. The agricultural sector at 2.40% (38,100 workers) reflects Lebanon's small but persistent agricultural sector in the Bekaa Valley, which has grown in relative importance as other sectors contracted.

What this means for workers

For workers still in Lebanon's formal economy, the AI risk from the 2019 data should be interpreted through the lens of what has already happened. The most AI-exposed groups - professionals and clerical workers - have already experienced significant attrition through emigration and layoffs. Workers remaining in these categories in 2026 are often those with stronger ties to Lebanon (family obligations, property, non-transferable credentials) or those in sub-specialisations less easily moved. They face dual pressure: AI substitution of tasks combined with Lebanon's inability to generate new formal employment opportunities.

The Lebanese diaspora dimension is important. Lebanon has approximately 14 million people of Lebanese descent living abroad versus roughly 5 million inside the country. The diaspora remittances - estimated at $7 billion annually pre-crisis, now reduced but still significant - partially insulate some Lebanese workers from pure economic displacement. Workers with diaspora connections have access to financial support and potentially to emigration pathways that pure AI displacement models do not capture.

Recovery resilience at 5.0 in the ILO model reflects Lebanon's pre-crisis institutional quality - the education system, multilingualism, and regional labour market access that once made Lebanese workers highly mobile. That mobility was the actual adjustment mechanism when AI-like disruption arrived via economic collapse rather than automation. The workers who could leave, left. The question for Lebanon's AI transition is whether any formal economy remains to be disrupted by the time AI models improve enough to substitute Lebanese professional tasks at scale.

Related analyses