Gaza is suffering from the worst economic crisis ever recorded, a UN report has found.
Unemployment and poverty have surged across the strip leaving 90 per cent of working-age Palestinians jobless, leading them into “multidimensional poverty”.
The assessment, released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on Thursday, found that Israel’s military action in Gaza since 1967 has led to a “spiralling crisis” for the population that has severely worsened since Hamas attacks on 7 October.
Among the findings are:
- 90 per cent of working-age Palestinians are unemployed
- Annual gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is at $212 ($0.58 per day)
- Only 1.5 per cent of arable land is accessible and industrial activity and agricultural production is down by 94 per cent
An estimated 92 per cent of Gaza’s “economic establishments have been damaged or destroyed”, it found. The territory’s daily per capita GDP was $0.58 in 2025, which is 82 per cent below the already low figures in 2022.
Prices have skyrocketed to 274 per cent higher than 2022.
“The collapse of the economy of Gaza is the world's most severe economic crisis on record,” said Pedro Manuel Moreno, acting secretary-general of UNCTAD.
“It has wiped out decades of development and generated an acute economic crisis for its people,” he told reporters in Geneva upon the release of the report.
The economic and financial crisis has extended to the occupied West Bank, with the report citing “reduced access to land and natural resources linked to (Israeli) settlement expansion”.
There, the report said that Israel has “continued to deprive the Government of the State of Palestine of its rightful fiscal revenues, revenues it controls, adding a significant, cumulative pressure on an already under-resourced Government tasked with responsibilities far exceeding the economic and political resources at its disposal.”
It warned: “The risk of the fiscal crisis affecting the banking sector and triggering systemic collapse is real.”
Before October 2023, two out of three people in Gaza were poor whereas today “everyone in Gaza is multidimensionally poor,” said Mutasim Elagraa, UNCTAD's coordinator for assistance to the Palestinians, according to AFP.
With industrial activity and agricultural production down by 94 per cent, Palestinians have been forced into a “total dependence on humanitarian food aid”, said Elagraa. Only 1.5 per cent of arable land is accessible.
The report accused Israel of being responsible for the disaster saying it had “imposed structural constraints that have systematically stunted the Palestinian economy, stunting productive capacity, entrenching poverty and forcing dependence on aid.”
The cost of rebuilding Gaza is estimated to be $71.5b with experts suggesting that clearing the rubble alone could take decades but can be done in seven years under the right conditions. Over 73,000 people have been killed since October 2023.
“Once a permanent ceasefire is secured, the international community should immediately mobilise large-scale financial and technical support, to rebuild Palestinian productive capacities at a scale that does not merely restore the status quo ante but actively reverses decades of de-development under occupation,” read the report.
“A viable, sovereign, independent Palestinian State, as called for in United Nations resolutions, is a precondition for regional and global peace. Yet it cannot be built on a collapsed economy.”
The Independent has contacted Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) for comment.
