Mukalla, Yemen – Mohammed Salem leaves every morning for his job as a teacher in a government school. But once his shift at that school is over, he moves to a private school, where he also teaches. After a brief stop at home for lunch, Mohammed goes to his third job, at a hotel, where he works for the rest of the day.

“If I had any extra time for a fourth job, I would take it,” said Mohammed, a teacher with 31 years of experience. He spoke to Al Jazeera outside his flat in a large residential complex in the eastern suburbs of Yemen’s south-eastern port city of Mukalla.

Yemen’s dire economic situation and, particularly, the decline of the Yemeni riyal against the US dollar in recent years have forced them to take on additional jobs.

“I return home at night completely burnt out,” he said. “Teachers are devastated and do not have time to take care of their students. During classes, they are busy with the next job after school.”

Despite working from morning to night, the father of six says he earns less than half of what he did a decade ago, down from $320 a month to $130.

For more than a decade, Yemen has been caught in a bloody conflict between the Iranian-backed Houthis and the Saudi-backed government—a war that has killed thousands, displaced millions, and affected almost every sector, including education.

The conflict has severely impacted the country’s primary sources of revenue, such as oil exports, customs duties, and taxes, as rival factions engage in both front-line combat and economic warfare.

The Houthis, who control Yemen’s densely populated central and northern highlands, including the capital, Sanaa, have not paid public sector salaries since late 2016, when the internationally recognised government moved the central bank from Sanaa to the southern city of Aden.

The Yemeni government, which controls Aden and the south, has failed to raise public sector wages or pay them regularly, citing declining revenues following Houthi attacks on oil export terminals in southern Yemen.

Thousands of Yemeni teachers have expressed frustration over stagnant and delayed pay, saying their wages have not improved since the war began. When they are paid, they are often late, and the value of wages has declined greatly as the Yemeni rial has fallen from about 215 to the dollar before the war began to about 2,900 to the dollar in mid-2025. The Yemeni rial is currently valued at around 1,560 per dollar in government-controlled areas.

Faced with meagre and irregular incomes, teachers like Mohamed have adopted drastic survival strategies to support their families. His family has been forced to skip meals, give up protein-rich foods like meat, fish and dairy, and move to the outskirts of the city in search of cheaper rents.

He told one of his children to leave university and instead join the army, where, he said, soldiers earn about 1,000 Saudi riyals ($265) a month.

Mohammed said, “If we have money, we buy fish.” When there ‘s nothing, we eat rice, potatoes and onions. We do not look for meat, and we can only obtain it from the mosque or charity during Eid.”

During holidays and weekends, he lets his children sleep until noon so that they don’t wake up and ask for breakfast.

And when one of his children falls ill, he first treats them at home with natural remedies like herbs and garlic, only taking severe cases to the hospital to avoid expensive medical bills. “I only take them to the hospital when they are very sick,” he said.

generation in danger

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in its Yemen Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan 2026, released on March 29, the country’s education sector is facing a catastrophic, multi-layered crisis.

An estimated 6.6 million school-aged children have been deprived of their right to education, while 2,375 schools have been damaged or destroyed. The severe impact on teachers is evident, with approximately 193,668, or two-thirds of the national total, not receiving any salaries.

In the al-Wadi district of Marib province, Ali al-Same, who has been teaching since 2001, said his salary of about 90,000 Yemeni riyals barely covers his expenses.

Due to financial stress he was forced to leave his family of seven in his hometown of Taiz.

“Instead of focusing on preparing lessons and using modern teaching methods, our entire focus is on how to earn enough money to support our families,” he said. “Before the war, my salary was equal to 1,200 Saudi riyals [$320]. Now it is about 200 Saudi Riyals [$52],” Al-Same told Al Jazeera.

To survive, he has taken on extra jobs, while his family has been forced to skip meals and cut meat and chicken. He now visits them only once a year and often arrives empty-handed after spending most of his salary on transportation.

“Now we live just to survive instead of teaching. Earlier salaries used to cover our basic needs, but now they are not enough; even milk has become a luxury. Life has become very difficult.”

Part-time teachers say they are worse off than their full-time counterparts, as the government has neither increased their salaries nor added them to the official payroll.

Hana al-Rubaqi, a part-time teacher in Mukalla and the sole breadwinner for her mother and three sisters, told Al Jazeera that her salary barely covers 10 days’ expenses.

Despite eight years of service, she earns the same as newly appointed contract teachers. “There is no job security despite my eight years of service. There is no difference between me and a contractor hired last year; everyone gets the same salary,” he said. “After taxes, my salary is only 70,000 Yemeni riyals [$44] one month. With the high cost of living, this amount seems more like a symbolic allowance than an actual salary.

He said the delay in payment has made their situation worse. “Delayed salaries disrupt our daily lives and I struggle to meet even my most basic needs. While some teachers can find additional work to support their families, it is incredibly difficult for us female teachers to do the same.”

Protests and patchwork solutions

To highlight their plight and pressure the government to improve wages, teachers in government-controlled areas staged sit-ins, took to the streets in protest and went on strike, disrupting education for months.

The cash-strapped government, which is mired in internal divisions and spends much of the year working from abroad, has largely left the issue to provincial officials.

Some governors have responded by approving modest incentives. In Hadramaut, an increase of 25,000 Yemeni riyals ($16) per month was approved, while in other areas it was up to 30,000 Yemeni riyals ($19) and 50,000 Yemeni riyals ($32).

“The incentives provided by local authorities vary from province to province, depending on each governor’s priorities and ability to support teachers in their region,” Abdullah al-Khanbashi, head of the teachers’ union in Hadramout, told Al Jazeera. He said that the protests will continue until teachers get better and regular salaries.

He said, “Teachers are seen in tattered clothes, and sometimes their students have more money in their pockets than they do. Some families are broke, while others have been evicted from their homes because they cannot pay the rent. Other teachers’ children are suffering from malnutrition because they are not able to feed them.”

In Marib, Abdullah al-Bazeli, head of the teachers’ union in the province, said local farmers have stepped up to help teachers stay in classrooms by giving them some of their produce.

“Farmers support teachers, especially those coming from outside the province, by giving them tomatoes, potatoes and other vegetables for free,” Al-Bazeli said.

He also called for raising the salaries of teachers to the level of ministers. He told Al Jazeera, “A teacher’s salary should be equal to that of a minister. Teachers educate generations, while ministers often fail to make a meaningful impact. Some teachers are beginning to die of hunger.”

In Houthi-controlled areas, teachers have rarely taken to the streets to protest the suspension of their salaries, as authorities suppress dissent and accuse the Yemeni government and the Saudi-led coalition of imposing a “blockade” that they say has hindered their ability to pay public sector salaries.

While acknowledging the problem of low wages, the Yemeni government says declining and disrupted revenues during the war have prevented it from increasing public sector wages. “The main reasons are weak financial resources as a result of war and repeated instability, which has weakened institutions and revenue streams,” Tariq Salem al-Akbari, who served as Yemen’s education minister from 2020 to 2026, told Al Jazeera.

Teachers interviewed by Al Jazeera say their patience with repeated promises that their salaries will be improved is wearing thin, warning that they may abandon the profession altogether if they find better-paying jobs that can save them from hunger or begging in public.

“The thought of leaving teaching is always on my mind, but I could not find any alternative job,” said Mohammed Salem. “I feel pity and sometimes even cry when I see a teacher begging in mosques or calling a hospital asking for help in treating a child.”