Services Claims Bigger Share of Labor Market in Q4: SCI

The services sector employed 53.7% of the Iranian employed population (12.58 million) in the fourth quarter of the previous Iranian year (Dec. 22, 2022-March 20), 1.8% higher than the corresponding period of the year before. 
The industrial and agricultural sectors provided 33.2% and 13% of jobs respectively, according to the Statistical Center of Iran.
Over 7.78 million were employed in the industrial sector, down 0.4 year-on-year and 3.05 million worked in agriculture, posting a 1.5% decrease YOY. 
The services sector consists of wholesale and retail trade; restaurants and hotels; transport, storage and communications; financing, insurance, real-estate and business services; as well as community, social, education, health and personal services.
The sector employed 10.33 million men and 2.24 million women in the three-month period. More than 6.87 million men and 963,265 women were working in the industrial sector and 2.89 million men and 373,680 women worked in the agriculture sector. 
Services accounted for 61.2% or 10.95 million of all jobs in urban areas and 29.6% or 1.63 million of jobs in rural areas. The industrial sector made up 34% or 6.09 million of the jobs in urban areas and comprised 30.5% or 1.9 million of employment in rural areas. 
Meanwhile, 4.8% or 855,651 of the total jobs in urban areas and 39.9% or 2.2 million of the jobs in rural areas were in the agriculture sector. 

Changing Labor Landscape 

According to economist Zahra Karimi, thanks to the surplus workforce in large industrial and service units, most of the new jobs pertain to the self-employed, or in enterprises with five or fewer workers. 
“Between the Q2 of fiscal 2021-22 and 2022-23, up to 547,000 jobs were created in the services sector, whereas the number of employees in the industrial sector was 122,000; the agricultural sector lost more than 300,000 jobs [mainly due to the water crisis] during the period. 
Most of the jobs in service sector include peddling, retailing and jobs in the transportation sector,” she said.
According to official reports, in 2021-22, the number of chauffeurs increased by one million. 
Karimi said many of them are those who have lost their jobs in manufacturing units and turned to driving since they had no other option. 
“In Iran, just like many other developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, you can observe the phenomenon of employment without growth. During recession, the share of manufacturing, sustainable and formal jobs decreases and the share of service, informal and unsustainable jobs with low productivity increases significantly,” she wrote for the Persian daily Donya-e-Eqtesad. 
“The significant growth of peddling in large and small cities, the rapid increase in the number of internet taxi drivers and the rising numbers of small shops for buying, selling and repairing mobile phones indicate decreasing investment and production, and increasing employment at the cost of lower productivity.”
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 36.6% (23.43 million), unchanged compared with the same quarter of the last Iranian year. Employment rates for men and women were 62% and 11.2%, respectively, which constituted 19.84 million men and 3.45 million women in Q4. 
Employment rate was 36.1% (17.91 million people) in urban areas and 38.2% (5.52 million) in rural areas. 
The share of employment of university graduates stood at 27.4% of the total employed population, wherein male and female graduate employment rates were 22.9% and 49.7%, respectively. In urban and rural areas, graduate employment rates stood at 33.2% and 8.9% of the total number of job-holders, respectively. 
Q4 statistics show that 35.6% of the country’s labor force worked more than 49 hours per week, indicating a 1.1% decrease over the same period of last year.