Labor market outcomes of Arab young adults have become more precarious since a decade ago, reflecting an increase in inequality of opportunities. We assess how the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these vulnerabilities. Applying job transition tables and multinomial logit regressions of workers’ employment statuses to panel microdata from rapid telephone surveys from four Arab countries, we estimate how the different stages of the pandemic affected job transitions and outcomes of distinct groups: young-older and female-male workers in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. We find that the stringency of pandemic-mitigation policies negatively affected employment and labor participation of most worker groups. Those laid off during the pandemic came predominantly from among those without formal employment history. Mitigating these trends, higher education and experience, and proximity to urban labor markets enables workers to retain employment, conferring consistently high returns to them in terms of remaining economically active or employed. In the latter stages of the pandemic, men’s prospects gradually recovered, but women largely remained shut out from the job market. Young adults trailed older workers throughout the pandemic. The pandemic thus perpetuated existing inequalities across sexes and ages, as well as across broader socioeconomic fault lines.