The news got very little media attention, probably because so few people believe the official unemployment statistics.
Several months later, the Fars news agency said that drop under 10 percent was achieved by counting the country’s homemakers and students as employed.
The Fars news agency quoted an employee of the Statistics Office as telling it the regime cut the unemployment rate below 10 percent by tinkering with the numbers. The official was identified only by his last name as Anari. The person gave no statistics.
But now the Statistics Office has abandoned the claim of cutting the rate below 10 percent and says the rate for the spring and fall quarters was 11.3 percent.
Even during the Khatami Administration, few believed the official figures. Officials back then announced they had to create 700,000 jobs a year to put all the nation’s high school graduates to work, then acknowledged only meeting 60 percent of that goal, yet still announced that the unemployment rate had fallen.
Before last June’s election, the Ahmadi-nejad Administration touted as a great accomplishment the drop in the unemployment rate to single digits.. It portrayed that number as proof that Ahmadi-nejad had succeeded in carrying out his 2005 election pledge to create many more jobs.
But few, even in conservative ranks, have appeared to believe the figures.
Earlier this month, an economist who asked not to be identified by name told the Reuters news service that Iran’s actual unemployment rate, using accepted international standards, would be in the range of 20 percent to 25 percent.
The unemployment rate in the United States last month was 9.7 percent. At its lowest, the rate was 3.2 percent in 1929, just before the Great Depression. The high was 24.9 percent at the bottom of the Great Depression in 1933.
