These unemployment queues are lengthening and the pool of the unemployed is getting deeper. Available data show that the widening “earnings gap” does not merely reflect differences in productivity (or investment in human capital), but is more closely associated with better access to highly paid jobs and positions through family connections and institutional factors (for example, endowment of “symbolic capital” a la Bourdieu), which make the labour market highly segmented. High job turnover and more irregular earnings are leading to a large section of the workforce in the ESCWA region falling into the secondary labour market, with low, irregular income and weak social protection.