working-age population. An overwhelming majority of employment for refugees comes from wage work (rather than self-employment). Refugees employed in the wage sector largely do not have a written contract, except for camp refugees in Jordan who are likely to be employed by NGOs and international organizations active in the camps.

Most refugees who have found work are employed in service sector jobs (Figure 10). Syrian refugees in Lebanon, despite being better educated than their counterparts in Kurdistan, work primarily in construction and household work. Roughly one-third of this group in Lebanon was employed in construction even prior to the crisis, but employment in household work (services provided to other households) has increased from 7.6 percent to 33 percent of all employment. In Kurdistan, the bulk of private sector employment for Syrian refugees comes from three industries: construction, wholesale and retail trade, and services (including household work). More than one-third of Syrian refugees were employed in construction before the crisis. While the share of refugees working in the wholesale and retail sector has increased from 6 percent to 14 percent, shares in manufacturing and agriculture sectors have fallen. In Jordan, agriculture, construction, services including household work, and wholesale and retail dominate refugees’ sectors of employment. Relatively more refugees now work in the service sector than in 2010 (20 percent compared to 7 percent).

# **_C. Financial Security_**

A large proportion of refugees reported having faced shocks related to their incomes and cost of living over the past year. Our survey asked both refugees and host community members if they had confronted job, income, or remittance losses; faced reduced or suspended assistance; run out of savings; or experienced increases in the prices of food, housing, and other necessities. In both Lebanon and KRI, a large majority of refugees report having experienced at least one of these shocks in the past year, and at rates higher than other groups (results not shown). This feature of the lives of forcibly displaced people highlights the importance of credit markets in aiding households to cope with large insecurity.

While subjective poverty rates are high for all refugees, a range of indicators also suggest improved financial well-being among refugee households in Kurdistan relative to Jordan, where similar data are available.<sup>14</sup> The vast majority of Syrian refugee households in Kurdistan and in the Jordan sample consider themselves to be poor and report that their earnings are inadequate to meet their basic needs. More than 60 percent report not having 100 Jordanian dinars (JDs) or 150,000 Iraqi dinars (ID) in savings (Figure 11). In fact, more than half of the refugees were in debt, owing someone outside the family at least that amount. Yet, refugees in KRI report relatively greater financial well-being than those in Jordan, including relatively lower rates of subjective poverty. In addition, refugees in KRI have better access to credit, with only one-third reporting they could not access a formal or informal loan of at least 150,000 ID from someone outside their family. In contrast, these rates are over 80 percent for a loan of 100 JDs in the Jordan sample.

> 14 These questions were not asked in the Lebanon survey.

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