South Khorasan Province filed the lowest unemployment rate of 6% among all Iranian provinces in the fourth quarter of last Iranian year (Dec. 22, 2019-March 19) while Kurdestan Province registered the highest unemployment rate of 20%.
Tehran Province, wherein lies the capital city, registered an 8.8% unemployment rate, the Statistical Center of Iran's latest report shows.
Eleven other provinces, namely South Khorasan (6%), Markazi Province (6.9%), Ilam (7%), Fars (7.7%), Semnan (8.3%), Tehran (8.8%), Khorasan Razavi (8.9%), Hamedan (9.3%), Mazandaran (9.3%), Zanjan (9.3%), East Azarbaijan (9.5%) and Qom (9.7%), registered single-digit unemployment rates for people of ages 15 and above in Q4.
Iran’s unemployment rate, the proportion of jobless population of ages 15 and above, stood at 10.6% in Q4, indicating a 1.7% decline compared with the same period of last year.
These numbers were calculated between Feb. 1 and Feb 14, before the outbreak of coronavirus, when the labor market was in better shape, the latest report by the Statistical Center of Iran reads.
A total of 2,788,587 Iranians were unemployed in Q4. Men’s unemployment stood at 9.2% while the rate for women hovered around 17.2%. Over 1.97 million men and 812,902 women of ages 15 and above were jobless in Q4.
The unemployment rate was 11.4% for urban areas (2.23 million people) and 8.5% for rural areas (554,330 people).
Hormozgan had the highest labor force participation rate (49.9%) and Markazi Province had the lowest labor force participation rate (35.6%), whereas Tehran registered a 41.7% participation rate in winter.
SCI put Q4 labor force participation rate—the proportion of the population of ages 15 and above that is economically active either employed or looking for job—at 42.4% or 26.22 million people, registering a 1.1% decrease year-on-year.
Men’s and women’s economic participation rates were 69.4% and 15.3% respectively in the same period.
SCI reports that 21.49 million men and 4.73 million women of ages 15 and above were economically active in Q4, i.e., they were either employed or looking for job.
Hormozgan registered the highest employment rate of 44% while Sistan-Baluchestan filed the lowest employment rate of 32.1% among all Iranian provinces. Tehran’s employment rate stood at 38%.
Employment is defined as persons of working age engaged in any activity to produce goods or provide services for pay or profit, whether at work during the reference period or not at work due to a temporary absence from a job, or to working-time arrangement.
The total Q4 employment rate was 37.8% (23.43 million), down 0.4% compared with the same quarter of last Iranian year. Employment rates for men and women were 63% and 12.7%, respectively, which constituted 19.51 million men and 3.92 million women in Q4.
The employment rate was 36.9% or 17.44 million in urban areas and 40.8% or 5.98 million in rural areas.
The share of employment of university graduates stood at 25.1% of the total employed population, wherein male and female graduate employment was 21.4% and 43.7%, respectively.
Graduate employment rates in urban and rural areas stood at 31% and 8.1% of the total population of job-holders.
Q4 statistics show 35.3% of the country’s labor force worked more than 49 hours per week, indicating a 0.2% decrease over the same period of last year.
