September 12-14
Going contrary to the usual official claims, Labor Minister Ali Rabii says unemployment is expected to soar in the next seven years as far more school-leavers join the workforce than jobs can be created for them.
Rabii said the labor force now totals 24.5 million Iranians, of which 2.5 million or 10.2 percent are unemployed.
Seven years from now, in 2021, the labor force is expected to total a whopping 42.5 million people, he said, with probably 7.5 million of them, or 17.6 percent, unemployed, the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) reported.
Rabii said that half of today’s 2.5 million unemployed are college graduates. It used to be that a college degree was a guarantee of a job, but Iran—like many other developing countries—has put such an emphasis on higher education that non-graduates now have a better chance of finding a job than graduates. As young people realize that, fewer are taking up seats in college classrooms.
Rabii said there are now 2 million unfilled jobs across the country that “no one is willing to take.” He complained that the unwillingness of many college graduates to take on jobs that require working with their hands has made the economy more dependent on Afghan refugees.
ILNA quoted Rabii as saying the rural unemployment rate is 8.7 percent while the urban unemployment rate stands at 11.3 percent.
He said the unemployment rate for women seeking careers is double that of men, suggesting continuing resistance by employers to hiring women. The unemployment rate for men is 9.1 percent while for women it is 18.9 percent, he said.
Most economists consider that all of these numbers grossly understate real unemployment rates, but reasonably state comparative relationships and thus female unemployment is probably really double that of male unemployment.