As a simple example, an employee travels about 40 kilometers back and forth every day between his home and his workplace. A few months ago, this daily trip was costing him approximately $180 a month. Today, with the successive rise in fuel prices, the bill has jumped to about $330 per month, i.e. a net increase of approximately $150, deducted directly from a salary that has not changed to the same extent.
The number seems even harsher when we put it in front of the official minimum wage in Lebanon, which is set at $350 per month. An employee on this salary, if he is forced to travel this distance daily, finds himself spending almost his entire monthly salary on fuel alone, before he even thinks about the electricity bill, or the allowance for subscribing to the neighborhood generator, or buying bread, meat, and vegetables, or even the rent allowance if he does not own his home.
The problem is compounded in families that depend on more than one car, such as the father going to work in one car, and the mother going to work or accompanying the children to school in a second car. Here we are no longer talking about an increase of $150, but rather about a double burden that sometimes approaches an additional $300 per month, a number that alone exceeds the entire minimum wage.
The transportation allowance does not fully address the problem. The daily allowance in the private sector is 450 thousand liras. If the worker receives 22 days of attendance, it amounts to 9.9 million liras, or about 111 dollars.
This amount barely covers the gasoline of an economical car, but it is about $21 less than the bill for a car that consumes 10 liters per 100 kilometers, and about $47 for a car that consumes 12 litres, without including any other costs associated with the car.
The effect of fuel does not stop when moving. Central Statistics Administration data showed that transportation category prices rose by 29.36% on an annual basis in June 2026, compared to general inflation of 17.25%. The rise of diesel has also moved to the bill for private generators. The kilowatt-hour tariff rose from 40,746 liras in July to 48,241 liras in August, i.e. a rate of 18.4%.
According to the official tariff for areas below 700 metres, the fixed toll rating for a 5 amp subscription is 385 thousand liras. By way of calculation, the bill for someone who consumes between 150 and 250 kilowatt-hours amounts to between 85 and 139 dollars, with the actual bill varying according to the region, capacity, and consumption.
The cruelty of the equation becomes more apparent when basic needs are added together. The cost of the minimum food basket for survival in March 2026 was about $43.5 per person per month, or $174 for a family of four people.
The logical result of this reality is what we have actually begun to notice on the Lebanese street: families completely reschedule their transportation, canceling “unnecessary” trips, merging rides into one trip instead of two or three, and replacing the use of a private car with shared means of transportation whenever possible, not out of environmental awareness, but out of pure financial survival.
The real question: How much is left of your salary?
For a family supported by a minimum of one employee, the total basic salary and full transportation allowance for 22 days is approximately $423. After deducting $132 for gasoline for a medium-sized car and $174 for the minimum amount of food, only about $117 remains for housing, electricity, water, medicine, education, and communications, and a generator bill within the scope of the previous example may alone consume most of this amount.
The current jump is linked to both internal and external factors. Lebanon imports refined gasoline and diesel fuel, and their costs are affected by the prices of finished products, shipping, insurance, and war risks. On September 11, the price of Brent crude approached $110 per barrel amid supply disruptions in the Gulf, while the prices of refined derivatives rose more sharply.
The crisis here is not limited to the price of a can of gasoline, which rose or fell by a few hundred thousand liras. The more accurate question that must be asked today is: After deducting the cost of getting to work, the electricity bill and the generator, the price of basic food necessities, and the housing allowance if any, how much is actually left of the Lebanese salary? In many cases, especially for those earning the minimum wage or those close to it, the simple answer is: almost nothing, or an actual deficit that is covered by debt or a fundamental reduction in the quality of food and consumption.
The severity of the problem increases even more when we take into account that fuel prices in Lebanon are directly linked to two prices that are completely outside the control of the average citizen: the global price of a barrel of oil, which has remained above $100 amid rising regional tensions, and the exchange rate of the dollar against the lira. In practice, any increase in any of these two factors is automatically and immediately transferred to the citizen’s pocket, without any social protection mechanism or automatic compensation to balance the impact, as is the practice in other countries that link social support to fuel or inflation indicators.
In the end, the gasoline bill is not just a rigid economic number that appears in the daily schedules of the Gas Station Owners Syndicate. It is the most realistic indicator of the Lebanese person’s ability to continue with his simple daily life: going to work, taking his children to school, and providing for his basic needs. As long as the minimum wage remains fixed at a time when fuel prices are moving upward without a clear ceiling, the most important question will remain asked again every month: How much is actually left of the Lebanese salary after he pays for his arrival to his workplace?
