6 Employment Looking at the rate and type of employment amongst ex-Gazans in Jerash offers some key insights into their situation. The data from the 2011 surveys paints a picture of generally lower employment amongst ex-Gazans in Jerash, and greater reliance on temporary and irregular work. Ex-Gazans outside Jerash, on the other hand, stand out for their particularly high rates of employment. In much of the labour force analysis, we focus on men and women separately. This is primarily done because among all camp refugees, as among all Jordanians, many labour force indicators differ vastly between men and women, and so it is difficult to obtain an accurate picture using combined data. Key concepts We adhere to terms in line with definitions of employment as recommended by the International Labour Organization (ILO). This framework (Figure 17) sorts the working-age population (aged 15 and above) into people who are economically active (the labour force) and those who are inactive (outside of the labour force). The labour force comprises people who are employed or temporarily absent from work, and those who are unemployed but want to work, actively seek work and would be able to take on a job if one was offered. Employment includes work for pay (in cash or kind) as well as unpaid activity, e.g. as an apprentice or in a household enterprise. It is also possible to define unemployment according to a ‘looser’ set of criteria. For example, one could leave out the ‘actively seeking work’ condition and include amongst the unemployed people who have given up any hope of finding work because they feel they lack the proper qualifications (skills mismatch), do not know where or how to look for a job, or they feel that no suitable work is available. However, many of these ‘involuntarily’ inactive individuals would have accepted a (suitable) job if they were offered one. The consequence of applying this wider definition of unemployment by including these so-called discouraged workers would be both a higher labour force participation rate and a higher unemployment rate. Excluding the ‘wanting to work’ criterion would have a similar effect. However, the impact of such steps on the statistics is usually modest and in our case, sorting those who are unemployed but not actively seeking work into the workforce would have implied a 1 to 1.5 percentage point increase in the labour force participation and unemployment rates with insignificant variation across the three population groups. A ‘strict’ ILO framework, requiring a large battery of questions, was applied in the sample survey, while the comprehensive survey collected labour force data applying a simpler questionnaire format, including asking household members interviewed to classify himor herself, as well as all other household members over 15, into one of the following categories: housewife/housekeeper; employed; unemployed, looking for work; unemployed, not looking for work; unable to work (for health reasons); retired; and had income (from non-work or pension sources). This chapter draws on data from both surveys. We primarily use data from the comprehensive survey to present labour force participation and unemployment rates and draw on data from the sample survey to examine details about ‘Just getting by’ Ex-Gazans in Jerash and other refugee camps in Jordan 59